


someday we'll try to walk upright

by soroga



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Pyrrhic Ending, Lack of Communication, M/M, Mid-Timeskip, War is hell, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:22:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24122791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soroga/pseuds/soroga
Summary: In the middle of a hopeless war, two childhood friends begin a relationship. One of them has so much practice destroying himself sexually it's basically second nature; the other can barely stand to express fear or need to himself, much less anyone else. What could possibly go wrong?In which Felix and Sylvain have a lot of sex Felix doesn't want without Sylvain realizing he doesn't want it.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 83
Kudos: 209
Collections: FE3H Kink Meme





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt on the [Three Houses Kink Meme](https://3houseskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/476.html?thread=319452):
> 
> _Sylvix finally started a romantic relationship but things are far from perfect. Sylvain has baggage from years of self-destructive tendencies and his abusive family and old habits die hard. Though he’s now in a relationship with Fe, Sylvain still openly flirts with women while at the same time being tender and sweet to Felix._
> 
> _His behavior causes Felix to fear Sylvain is cheating on him or that he doesn’t take their relationship seriously. Felix is 100% inexperienced with sex and relationships but he’s been in love with Sylvain for a awhile and he’s anxious about Sylvain getting tired of him and leaving him for some fling._
> 
> _Felix is terrible with words and in an attempt to “keep” Sylvain, he tries to give what he thinks Sylvain wants the most in a relationship. He agrees to sex he really doesn’t feel ready for. Things keep escalating sexually in their relationship and he keeps agreeing to them even though he doesn’t to, hoping that satisfying Sylvain sexually will be enough to keep him from straying. Sylvain is unaware that Felix is having sex with him out of insecurity. Any reluctance Felix shows during sex Fe immediately uses the excuse of him still being inexperienced._
> 
> Title is from the song "Damn These Vampires" by the Mountain Goats, which also serves as a theme song for this fic.

“Looks like rain,” Sylvain says for the sixth time that day. 

Felix didn’t bother to stop and look at the sky the first time. He’s not going to do it now. “It’s the Wyvern Moon,” he says, continuing to pick his way down the hillside. “It’s going to look like rain all month.” He’s sure of his footing, but in the dark, it would be too easy to miss the burrow of some small animal and twist an ankle, and he’s not ready to humiliate himself that way. 

“Sure, but it looks _especially_ like rain.” And now Sylvain’s voice sounds a little farther away. 

Felix almost keeps walking without saying anything. Sylvain would inevitably start following him again. But instead he turns and looks at Sylvain, still at the top of the hill, the crescent moon shining behind him. Sylvain’s looking up to the sky, one hand loose on his horse’s halter, though the creature doesn’t seem inclined to walk off and leave them without their supplies. 

It’s too dark to see his expression, but Felix still knows what it is - that little frown he gets when he’s actually serious about something. “You want to stop somewhere,” he says, already resigned to the idea. They should press forward. It’s only just past dusk; if they keep traveling for a few more hours and make camp on the hard ground somewhere, they’ll make much better time tomorrow. 

But when Sylvain says, “I don’t want to subject any of us to getting soaked like that,” Felix doesn’t snap that Sylvain can’t predict the weather, or that it’s looked like it will rain for the past four days now. 

He just says, “any of us? We both know you’re only concerned about your hair and your horse.” 

“Hey now,” Sylvain protests, and Felix doesn’t move away as he finally comes closer. “I’m concerned about all the important things here! So my hair, my horse, and you.” 

He follows that up by caressing Felix’s arm, like it’s some great romantic line. “Ugh,” Felix groans, already walking away.

It’s fine. In the dark, Sylvain can’t see the stupid smile Felix can’t keep off his face. 

The sky gives a last threatening rumble and finally breaks open about five seconds after they enter the inn.

“Don’t,” Felix says immediately.

“What?” Sylvain says, crossing his arms casually behind his head with a smug smile. “I didn’t say anything.”

Felix rolls his eyes and wanders through the main room to the inn’s counter. The woman there doesn’t recognize him immediately - unsurprising, since they’re no longer in Fraldarius - but then all of a sudden she _does_ and Felix has to end the conversation as quickly as possible. He slaps a handful of gold on the counter, hoping that will do it, but she objects to that. 

“I can’t accept payment from you, my lord,” she says, and Felix wants to hit something.

Any of the merchants back at Garreg Mach would have taken his money. Anna would have taken every last cent on him without blinking. It’s only the people of Faerghus who are so fucking stupid about _honor_.

“I insist,” he grinds out, shoving it at her again. 

Eventually, he’s able to escape with a key to a room upstairs. But even that isn’t the end of his problems, because when Felix walks back from the inn’s front counter to its main room, he finds Sylvain sitting at a table with two girls. 

There is nothing suspicious going on. Sylvain is a polite few feet away from them, leaning back in his chair instead of forwards in their direction, looking for all the world as though he is having a polite conversation, like anyone who wasn’t Sylvain would have with some fellow travelers he ended up sharing a table with. 

But Felix has known Sylvain too long to not get suspicious whenever he sees him so much as breathe the same air as a woman he doesn’t know. And the girls are swapping confused looks that Felix can read as easily as he can read the line of Sylvain’s back: _he was coming on so strong, why’d he suddenly go all cold on us?_

Felix has seen Sylvain suddenly go cold on so many people before, after all. 

Sylvain’s little jolt when Felix circles around into his field of vision is pretty good, but he can’t keep the guilt out of his eyes even as he gives Felix a soft smile.

It doesn’t stop the smile from doing something strange to Felix’s heart, but Felix ignores it, staring levelly in return until the smile slips off Sylvain’s face. “We’re sharing a room,” he says flatly, ignoring the girls altogether. “It’s on the second floor.” 

He turns around and walks up the stairs without bothering to take a glance behind himself. Sure enough, he hears Sylvain’s sheepish tread anyway. He can imagine just how Sylvain must look: rubbing the back of his head with one hand, smiling in that self-effacing way that somehow manages to admit a bad deed without truly admitting wrongdoing.

He doesn’t need to imagine it too hard. As he walks down the hallway, counting doors to make sure he gets to the right one, Sylvain’s excuses start pouring in. “It’s not what you think,” and then, “I was just making conversation, honest,” and then, “sure, I was flirting a little, but it’s not like I _meant_ it.” 

Felix has heard it all before, most of it multiple times from two doors down at Garreg Mach. He’s heard all the reactions, too: the screaming, the crying, the accusations, the threats, the pathetic, gullible forgiveness. 

None of them ever work. Sometimes Felix thinks the sex is beside the point for Sylvain; he really gets off on being slapped and dumped, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get there. He’s completely inured to all the normal responses.

Felix has always prided himself on thinking outside the box. Sometimes the most surprising move is the right one, at least to buy time to make another, better move. 

So instead of saying anything, he hands Sylvain their room key and starts unbuttoning his vest.

“Uh, Felix?” Sylvain says, key hanging uselessly in his slack grip.

Felix scowls. “Get the door open already. I’m not taking this off in the hall.” 

Sylvain fumbles the key so hard he nearly drops it before he’s finally able to stick it in the door and twist the knob. 

Felix pushes past him, fingers already working at the buttons of his shirt underneath his open vest. 

He hears the door shut behind him, and then Sylvain is sliding up behind him. “Let me help,” he says, then kisses the side of Felix’s neck, lips lingering tenderly.

He’s no help at all, but Felix doesn’t shrug him off, letting Sylvain’s hands wander up and down his sides even though it makes taking his undershirt off take twice as long. He has to wriggle it down his back to get it off with the way Sylvain’s clinging to him, but Sylvain doesn’t waste a moment once it’s gone, his hands kneading and groping with more intent over Felix’s naked chest. 

Felix twists in his hold, turning enough that he can slide his own hands over Sylvain’s sides, feeling his warmth and the cut of his muscles before he leans in to kiss Sylvain, mouth wet and open. 

Sylvain makes a happy noise as he sucks on his tongue, rubbing his thumb over the dip of Felix’s back, and then he’s backing Felix towards the bed. Felix lets him, but when the backs of his knees hit the mattress he twists again, pivoting as he falls so that Sylvain ends up on his back on the bed instead.

Sylvain laughs beneath him, eyes shining as he looks up at Felix, unbearably fond. “You’re so slippery,” he teases, threading his fingers together behind Felix’s back to lock him in place. “How am I supposed to keep you here?” 

The room is poorly lit, only a pair of candles in their holders illuminating the curve of Sylvain’s lips and the soft, open look on his face. It’s still enough to make Felix’s mouth dry, so he leans in to kiss Sylvain to wet it again. “I’m sure you’ll think of a way to keep my attention somehow,” he says against Sylvain’s lips.

Sylvain laughs into his mouth, and it vibrates through Felix in a way that’s quickly becoming familiar, strange yet right. His hands stay locked as they slip down Felix’s back, only twisting apart to cup Felix’s ass and push their bodies closer together, driving Felix’s thigh against Sylvain’s hardness.

Felix freezes. 

Sylvain lets go immediately, hands springing up as if he’s touched something that’s burned him. “Whoa, sorry - too much?” 

“Of course not,” Felix snaps, though he’s still shaking off the panicked jolt that went through him when Sylvain grabbed his ass. 

“It’s fine if it was too much,” Sylvain continues as though Felix hadn’t said anything. “Do you want to kiss a little more? Or I can let you go to sleep.”

His eyes are so wide and concerned. In the dim light, their honey brown has melted into something tender and honest. But Felix is caught other than his eyes. “Let me go to sleep? What will you do?” 

Sylvain shrugs, an awkward motion when he’s still on his back looking up at Felix. “The night is young. I could go downstairs again, get something to eat, maybe have an ale.” 

_Maybe pick up a woman,_ Felix hears. 

He’s not stupid. Sylvain will go downstairs with the most innocent of intentions, and within half an hour of chewing over how Felix freezing up on him might be his fault he’ll be ready to do something stupid to both of them. 

Instead of letting that happen, Felix kisses Sylvain again, all tongue and teeth. He grinds down as he does so, feeling Sylvain’s cock press and rub against his thigh, until Sylvain’s hovering hands hesitantly come back down on Felix’s back. 

“Fuck,” Sylvain says, eyes wide. “Not too much?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Felix says with an eyeroll that takes a little too much effort to pull off. Whatever. Sylvain won’t notice. “It’s not - you know I haven’t done any of this before. It’s not a big deal if it takes me a second to figure it out.” 

“Yeah, of course,” Sylvain says quickly, already melting again, body hot and hard against Felix like they’d never paused at all. His hands grab Felix’s ass harder, pushing him down to grind against him, and Felix lets him, even though it feels - 

Whatever. It’s just Sylvain. Felix’s pants are still on. So what if being touched there makes Felix desperately want to squirm away? 

He keeps kissing Sylvain to distract himself. He loves kissing Sylvain, loves the way Sylvain’s tongue feels against him, the way their ragged breathing starts to match after a while. The way his lips tingle so sweetly all over, until just kissing isn’t enough, and he has to bite Sylvain’s lower lip to encourage him to bite Felix in turn. 

It feels good, even if unease keeps creeping up Felix’s spine, like it’s spreading out from where Sylvain’s hands are touching him. But it’s not enough to soften his erection, and he keeps grinding against Sylvain’s hip as Sylvain gasps and shakes beneath him, the sweet press of Sylvains’ mouth and the pressure against his cock enough to make him come not long after Sylvain does. 

Sylvain’s not into intense, open-mouthed kissing after he’s come, so Felix turns his head, resting his forehead against Sylvain’s shoulder instead. This has the side effect of tossing his ponytail in Sylvain’s face, and Sylvain takes the bait, finally letting go of Felix’s ass to play with the ends of his hair instead.

But only with one hand. The other hand stays where it’s been the whole time, like Felix’s ass is now allowed territory.

It makes a hard knot form in Felix’s stomach. He twists further, falling on his side, and Sylvain’s hand _finally_ slides off.

Felix knows it’s only a temporary reprieve. But lying there, breathing in Sylvain’s smell with him so warm in his arms, it’s hard to think about that with any real seriousness. 

And for all Sylvain made noise about it being early, he stays glued to Felix, telling him dumb stories and playing with his hair. Before the hour is through, he’s forgotten all about going downstairs, and Felix considers it a bargain well struck.

The thing is, Felix isn’t worried about losing Sylvain.

He doesn’t always understand why Sylvain does the things he does, but on the whole, Sylvain’s not hard to read. Felix managed to slide in early and make a place for himself in Sylvain’s heart when they were children, before Sylvain’s imperfect shell hardened completely into something barbed on both sides. He was there to watch Sylvain practice brave, insincere smiles and excuses long before he got good at either, and he was one of the few people that Sylvain didn’t need either with - not that that stopped him. 

Felix always went and found Sylvain when he was a weak, sniveling child himself, and then Sylvain orbited him all through their year together at Garreg Mach, flitting off after skirts but always returning to Felix like he was pulled to him. 

They were bound together long before they ended up stuck in this endless war, slogging miserably through muddy, corpse-strewn fields to find each other again and again. So it’s impossible for Felix to truly lose Sylvain. Even if they’d gotten together at the Officer’s Academy, during that one stupid year where Felix spent constantly teetering between dread and contentment, Felix wouldn’t have lost Sylvain. Felix wouldn’t have let Sylvain touch his ass, and Sylvain would have gone and touched someone else’s instead, and they would have had a furious argument about it that ended with them not looking at each other for a week, but they would have still been friends again after. 

Now, with the war on, Felix thinks they could play out the same steps and maybe skip the week of not looking at each other. The friends they have who aren’t dead yet have scattered all over Fodlan, and contentment is much harder to find these days than dread. Felix is all Sylvain has left; even if he’ll do a million stupid things to destroy their relationship, sleepwalking through all the ways he’s destroyed relationships before, he will never destroy their friendship.

But Sylvain is all that Felix has left, and Felix is so fucking sick of just being Sylvain’s friend.


	2. Chapter 2

Felix wakes before Sylvain does, still wrapped up in his arms. Sylvain’s a loud, clingy sleeper, always changing positions or smacking his lips. Felix can always tell when he’s faking it because he’ll lie too still. 

Right now he’s mumbling something into Felix’s neck, so Felix knows he’s really asleep. Felix is sure enough that he doesn’t bother disguising it as he presses in even closer to Sylvain, shutting his eyes and breathing him in. 

They bathe in all the same places using the same scraps of soap, so Felix doesn’t know how Sylvain always smells like Sylvain. It’s a smell Felix associates with comfort. Back at Garreg Mach, before he’d even known what he was feeling, he’d smell it on his bedspread long after Sylvain had quit lounging there and it would make his whole body relax. 

Felix can’t avoid knowing what he feels now as he breathes in deep, smelling Sylvain’s skin, feeling the warmth of his skin and the reassuring thump of his heartbeat beneath his hands. Here is Sylvain, present and living, solid and reliable. Here is something unbloodied and whole and worth protecting. 

It soothes him, though he can’t relax the way he did when they were students. He gives himself a moment longer before sliding out of bed and dressing to face the day. 

He finds the innkeeper below, and she smiles at him, far too gracious. It makes his stomach churn. He still can’t believe she’d tried to let them stay without payment. It can’t be easy trying to run an inn in the middle of a war, especially this close to what overnight became a border and a battlefront. She probably needs every piece of gold she can get. Sometimes it seems like everyone in Faerghus is the same, ready to die for their pride. 

At least she’d relented eventually, which is what lets Felix nod curtly at her in response instead of having to look away. He avoids eye contact as he gathers breakfast, though, and doesn’t linger, heading right back upstairs. 

He must have woken Sylvain up as he left despite his best efforts, because Sylvain’s perched on the edge of the bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Hey,” he says, smiling. “Is that for me?”

His hair’s a mess, curling artlessly over his ears in a way he lets few people see. Felix looks away. “I was getting some for myself anyway,” he says, shoving a bowl at Sylvain.

“Sure, sure,” Sylvain says, wrapping both hands around it. “You were getting yourself sweet buns?” 

Felix rolls his eyes and sits next to Sylvain on the bed to dig into his eggs. 

They eat in comfortable silence, their arms brushing occasionally. But Sylvain’s never been any good with silence, so of course he breaks it the second Felix puts his empty bowl on the floor. “You know, we could have just eaten in the main room,” he says. “Don’t they prefer it when you do that?”

Felix shrugs. Innkeepers probably do, on the whole, but then someone might talk to them, and Felix just doesn’t feel like dealing with that so early in the morning. 

“Unless...you wanted us to be somewhere more private?” Sylvain asks. 

Felix eyes him warily. Felix is fully dressed, but Sylvain is barefoot, beltless, in his undershirt, sleep-rumpled…

And turned on, of course. 

“I take back any apology I’ve ever given you,” Felix says. “You really are insatiable.” 

“Hey, come on! This was your little plot, wasn’t it?” Sylvain teases, grinning. “Making sure we had more alone time? It was a good idea bringing me breakfast in bed. I know that move. It’s a great way to keep me all to yourself.” 

“I think you’re getting me confused with you,” Felix says, but he puts Sylvain’s empty bowl on the floor beside his own, then swings a leg over Sylvain’s lap. 

He clutches Sylvain’s shoulders as Sylvain sucks bruises into his neck, digging his fingers into Sylvain’s back as a warning that he knows _exactly_ what Sylvain is doing, but not stopping him. 

Sylvain clutches him right back, his hands big and warm against Felix’s spine, sliding up to grip the back of his neck and direct him to a better angle or back down to his waist, just to hold him. 

It’s good. Good enough that Felix can get lost in the rhythm of Sylvain’s lips against his neck, good enough that Felix can ignore the way Sylvain grinds against him, always convinced that every encounter needs to end with them both coming even when Felix would be happier just kissing and touching. 

But Sylvain focuses on making him come like it’s his mission, and when he does, it feels good. It washes over him in pleasant waves, and when he relaxes against Sylvain and lets him hold him up, he feels connected to him. Bound to him, but more intimately than usual.

It’s not uncomfortable at all, except that now he has to change his pants again, which he assumes Sylvain did on purpose. It makes Felix hope that this is it - he’s over whatever keeps making him cringe back when Sylvain wants to move forward, and now he won’t have to steel himself the next time Sylvain slides his hand up Felix’s thigh in a way he’s not used to. 

(He’s hoped that before. He hasn’t been right yet.) 

They set out soon after, early enough that Felix doesn’t feel like they’ve managed to waste the whole day. They collect Sylvain’s horse from the inn’s stable, piling their necessities on her before they set off. The creature walks along at an even pace behind them with her lead rope dangling freely, though she occasionally gets distracted by an especially tasty-looking patch of grass and needs to be urged along by the clicking of Sylvain’s tongue.

“You should train her better,” Felix says, mostly to needle Sylvain. He has only a distant, businesslike relationship with his own horse, who is far more familiar with the stablehands at Fraldarius than she is with Felix himself, but he can hardly forget how stubborn and driven she always is. It would probably take a lot more than some noises from Felix to drag her head away from something she actually wanted.

“Hey, Beauty’s fine!” Sylvain predictably protests. “She’s been cooped up all night in an unfamiliar place and it’s a beautiful day. Why shouldn’t she enjoy it as much as the rest of us?”

“One of these days, we’ll be fighting somewhere that isn’t completely burnt or frozen and you’ll topple down her neck when she decides she’s hungry at the wrong time.”

“No way. She might not be glued to me like your sword is to you, but she always has my back when it really matters.” Sylvain falls back to wrap himself affectionately around his horse’s neck. “Isn’t that right, Beauty?” 

Beauty tolerates his arms around her for a moment, then twists out of his grip to lip at the grass under his feet and tear a chunk out of the ground with her teeth. Felix snorts and keeps walking. 

Sylvain has a point, though. It is a beautiful day. Possibly too beautiful, for being so close to the edges of the Faerghus Dukedom and so deep into the Wyvern Moon. Last night’s rain has left the sky crisp and unmarred by clouds; the grass below their feet is long and healthy, rustling slightly in the crisp fall breeze. 

Felix squints suspiciously at the blue, cloudless sky, but no ill omen or wyvern passes overhead, even though he stands there staring long enough that Sylvain laughs at him and tugs him along by the arm. 

“Now who’s getting distracted?” He says. “Come on, as fun as this is, we do have to meet up with the rest of the troops sooner rather than later.” 

They should have met up with Sylvain’s battalion yesterday where the route from Gautier and the route from eastern Fraldarius converged and marched with them instead of stopping at their own pace, but Felix doubts anyone is going to say anything to them about it. They’ll all be miserably spread out across battlefields when they’re not miserably cramped into tents soon enough. The battlefront to the west has been one grim line creeping ever-closer since the war started, and there’s only so much they can do to hold back the tide. 

As if sensing the shift in Felix’s thoughts, Sylvain slides his hand down Felix’s arm, tangling their fingers together. 

Felix’s face burns. “What do you think you’re doing?” 

“I think that’s obvious,” Sylvain says, stroking Felix’s knuckles with his thumb. 

“Ugh. That’s - “ Felix can tell by Sylvain’s growing grin that his face is absolutely glowing. “You’re ridiculous.” 

“And you’re not pulling your hand away,” Sylvain points out.

Felix doesn’t want to pull his hand away, but having it pointed out is too much. He feels exposed, suddenly, like his lack of reaction has made it too obvious how he feels, and how _much_ he feels. He shakes his hand loose abruptly and stalks ahead.

“Wait - Felix! Come back!” Sylvain jogs after him, Beauty’s hooves louder against the soft earth as she picks up the pace to match him. “Come on, can I hold your hand? For me?” 

“Hmph.” It’s transparent, but Felix feels better about it as Sylvain picks up his hand again, slotting their fingers together. It almost feels like Sylvain really does want to hold his hand and isn’t just trying to distract him. 

It’s a foolish thing to think. But Sylvain doesn’t tease him about it again, and Felix doesn’t let go of Sylvain’s hand for a long time. 

The front is a sprawling mess. 

As a child, Felix had sat through countless recountings of battles: where the defensive line held, where it broke, where the supply line was cut, why this noble had chosen to burn her own field rather than let the enemy take it, how these farmers were pressganged into service. But all of those rote descriptions had failed to truly capture the scope of preparation that went on. A battle is not just fighting and dying; it’s the work of setting up medical tents, the endless caravan of supply wagons, the parade of camp followers, and a thousand other things large and small that cover Blaiddyd Pass with banners visible even before Felix and Sylvain crest the ridge leading up to it. 

“Has it gotten even uglier since the last time we were here?” Felix asks, squinting at the movement below. It’s too damn bright to make everything out, but it certainly seems as if there’s more people, somehow, despite all the death that’s been going around the last few years. There’s also more holes in the ground, more piles of horse shit, and a huge pyre fouling the air, even though it’s barely afternoon.

“It seems like it,” Syvlain says, frowning. “I didn’t think that was possible.” 

Felix had dropped Sylvain’s hand and put his gloves on once they’d started climbing, and he’s not about to let anyone else see him holding hands with Sylvain anyway, but he misses the physical tether as they troop down the slope towards the edges of the camp, Beauty delicately picking her way behind them.

He misses it because Sylvain, of course, gets distracted by the first person he sees, walking up with his arms crossed casually behind his head to greet her like an old friend. Or like a normal person might greet an old friend, anyway; Felix can tell by the rigidity of Sylvain’s smile that he doesn’t know the knight at all and doesn’t necessarily care to, though of course he can’t stop himself from making conversation anyway. 

“Well, you do what you can,” Sylvain is saying with a touch of genuine sympathy when Felix starts unburdening Beauty. They’ll have to set up their tent closer to the middle of camp, but there’s no point making Beauty carry it the last stretch, especially when she’s going to have to end up stabled somewhere else with the other cavalry horses. “Has there been any movement from Conand since then?”

“Not that I’ve heard,” the knight says, shaking her head. “But there’s been plenty in Magdred, especially around the Oghma Mountains. Most of it isn’t ours. I don’t know what Count Rowe is thinking…” 

Felix tunes her out, heaving the collapsed tent over one shoulder while Beauty tries to eat his hair. He shoves her head away with his free hand, and of course the messy smack of her lips leaves horse spit all over his glove. He wipes it against her neck, but her neck is filthy from the walk and from rolling when they’d stopped for lunch, so his glove just ends up equally filthy. 

Giving it up as a bad job, he takes off towards the center of camp. 

He makes it maybe twenty steps before he hears Sylvain’s footsteps behind him, catching up. “So things aren’t going well,” Sylvain says.

Felix snorts. “You needed to interrogate a knight to figure that out?” Felix can’t remember the last time things were going well in Faerghus. Probably when Gautier had expanded at the end of the Sreng campaign when he was all of eight years old.

“No, I mean…” Sylvain hesitates. “Things _really_ aren’t going well.” 

Their eyes meet for just a second before Felix has to look away. He’s too familiar with the grim, resigned look in Sylvain’s eyes; he sees it everywhere these days. 

“I’ll set everything up,” Felix says. “Go take care of your beast.” 

Here is how not-well things are going: 

Conand has long had bandit troubles, relying on help from the surrounding territories and the Church to keep things under control. With the war, Lady Conand had found herself with fewer options than usual, and ended up relying on a mercenary company. The mercenary company had promptly gotten a larger payment from the Faerghus Dukedom and slaughtered the entire House of Conand. Or at least, all the members still present in the territory.

“Gilda Conand was at the school of sorcery in Fhirdiad when the war broke out,” Sylvain says, sitting down heavily next to Felix in their newly-erected tent. “Remember her?” 

“Yes.” She’d been too young to be a good playmate, but Felix remembers one year when they were all in Fhirdiad together, Gilda had gotten tired of her mother fussing over her hair and cut it short with a knife, then refused to let anyone fix it. Felix had respected that, though he found her hair as unsightly as everyone else. She would have been twelve when the war started, just old enough to be accepted at the royal academy. 

“I thought she was a hostage to make sure her mother behaved, but why would Cornelia bother killing them all if she had a hostage?” 

“Spite,” Felix suggests, though it isn’t a real question, and the troubled look Sylvain shoots him makes it clear he knows it isn’t a good answer. Someone that spiteful has no reason to keep Gilda alive. 

“And that’s not even getting into whatever’s going on in the Oghma Mountains…” Sylvain sighs, tipping his head back against the tent’s canvas wall. “Felix, do you ever feel like…”

“Yes,” Felix says. 

It’s just the two of them again, so he tugs his gloves off and takes Sylvain’s hand between his. 

Sylvain grips his hands back tightly. “Sorry to be such a killjoy,” he says, one side of his mouth lifting in an unhappy smile.

“Right, because I came to the front to feel joy,” Felix says flatly in return, surprising a bark of a laugh out of Sylvain.

“Still.” Sylvain’s other hand comes to Felix’s knee, then slides up it. “Can I make it up to you? I want to make you feel good.”

Felix stares at that hand as it creeps up because it’s easier than looking at Sylvain’s face. He’s always been so good at reading Sylvain’s body language, but that all goes out the window the second Sylvain’s body language starts reading as turned on. Does he _actually_ mean that he wants to make Felix feel good? Because Felix isn’t aroused by discussing the likely death of a child they both knew or the dismal state of the war. They’ve been walking all day; he’d rather clean his swords, or get some food, or just lie there with Sylvain.

Or is it like how he asked to hold Felix’s hand and pretended it was for his own sake? Is this something Sylvain needs, dressed up as something Felix wants? 

His head hurts. He doesn’t have the energy to untangle which it might be. But he’s trying to give Sylvain what he needs, to _be_ what Sylvain needs, the way Sylvain always is what he needs. So he says, “fine.” 

Sylvain beams, so it must have been the right choice. Then he leans in to kiss him, still gripping Felix’s hands, and Felix kisses back, scooting in closer. 

Sylvain’s mouth is hot and wet against his, and Felix feels himself start responding. They’ve done this enough times that it’s ingrained in Felix, just another form of muscle memory: Sylvain kisses him, he kisses back just so, his hands know just where to fall - 

But even though Sylvain finally lets go of his hands, he doesn’t know what to do with them when Sylvain slips his own hands into Felix’s pants. 

“This okay?” Sylvain asks, kissing Felix’s neck.

“Yes,” Felix says without thinking about it. Another form of muscle memory: Sylvain starts kissing him and Felix says yes to whatever comes next, even if his thighs tense up like he wants to run. Even if he doesn’t feel ready for the feeling of Sylvain’s fingers around his dick, the skin-to-skin contact startling and unwelcome. 

This is for Sylvain, Felix reminds himself. He’s giving Sylvain what he needs. 

And Sylvain does seem to need it, leaning back far enough to drink in the sight of Felix’s face as he pulls Felix’s cock out of his pants and starts stroking it. 

Felix isn’t sure what his face is supposed to be doing. People moan, right? Felix has never been a moaner and he’s not about to start faking it. Sylvain doesn’t seem to mind; he’s riveted, his eyes fixed on Felix’s face. It’s intense, being at the center of his attention like that, and it makes Felix squirm a little, looking down at the bedroll beneath them so he doesn’t have to make eye contact. He likes it, but…

“Yeah,” Sylvain says. “It’s good, right?” 

Sylvain always wants so much feedback. “Yeah,” Felix says. 

And it is. Sylvain grips his cock expertly, learning everything Felix likes faster than Felix himself learned it. Soon he’s stroking him fast from root to tip, squeezing at the very base on every stroke before rubbing his hand up to thumb the head of Felix’s cock, paying extra attention to his slit. 

It makes a pleasant pressure build up in Felix, spreading out to his abdomen from his groin. He’s tense still, but it’s a different kind of tension. Sylvain’s hand feels so good on him, perfectly rough, and it’s enough to quiet the anxious voice in the back of his head that doesn’t know how to feel about this and let him thrust up into Sylvain’s grip. 

Then Sylvain leans down and takes the head of Felix’s cock into his mouth. 

Felix’s hips stutter. Sylvain laughs, and the sound vibrates through Felix’s cock, but he’s not - Felix isn’t - 

There’s a weird sensation in Felix’s chest as Sylvain pins his hips down and mouths at his cock. It’s not painful and it’s not cold. It’s something like the dread he felt talking about Gilda, and he feels a sudden, vicious rush of anger at himself for even thinking that, as if a blowjob he didn’t expect could compare to anyone’s death. 

But the feeling doesn’t go away as Sylvain slurps at the head of his cock before swallowing more of it down, sucking as he goes. And the voice in the back of his head is back, even louder, and with something new to say. Felix is going to have to do this _back_ , isn’t he? Sylvain has upped the stakes again. He won’t be satisfied going back to fully-clothed grinding. If Felix wants to give Sylvain what he needs, he’s going to have to give him things he hadn’t even thought of yet. Things he thought he’d have more time to prepare for. Things he doesn’t - 

Felix’s chest is starting to hurt now. But Sylvain’s mouth is warm on his cock, and Sylvain knows what he’s doing. The pressure keeps building in Felix’s abdomen, and eventually he comes in Sylvain’s mouth. 

It feels more like a muscle spasm than an orgasm. Felix barely understands what’s happened until Sylvain sits up again, grinning open-mouthed at him, and Felix sees his own come on Sylvain’s tongue. 

Then Sylvain is kissing him again. 

It’s not disgusting, exactly. Felix has tasted himself before out of curiosity. He didn’t repeat that experiment, but it’s hardly the worst taste in the world. So Felix keeps himself from jerking away, and he even kisses back. It makes the feeling in his chest start to abate. He can kiss normally after. He can get used to this. 

(He’s not going to have to do it back _now_ , is he?) 

“You lasted longer than I thought you would,” Sylvain says, laughing affectionately as he rests his forehead against Felix’s. “I’m impressed! I was a lot faster my first time.”

“Obviously I’m better than you at more than just fighting,” Felix says automatically, which just makes Sylvain snicker more. Felix hesitates, then continues. “Do you want to…?”

“Only if you want to,” Sylvain says, not moving. 

He makes no effort to grind against Felix. Felix was right; there’s no going back to that.

Whatever. What is he going to do, only do things that make him comfortable forever? There’s no growth in comfort; Felix has always known that.

So he doesn’t let himself hesitate. He slips his hand into Sylvain’s underwear, squeezing his cock. 

The shape of it surprises Felix for some reason. Maybe it’s just the angle - this isn’t exactly the way he grips himself, and he’s usually not trying to work within his own underwear, either. Taking it out to give himself more room helps a little, but not a lot. 

It’s the first time he’s touched a dick that isn’t his own. He knows he should take it slow, get himself used to the shape of it in his hand, figure out the best way to do this. Sylvain wouldn’t begrudge him a few moments of adjustment, and in fact is staring at him with something like awe in his eyes, like Felix has done something impressive.

But Felix is tired and he doesn’t feel good. He just wants it to be over. So instead he jerks Sylvain off fast and hard, like he’d do to himself. Hopefully Sylvain will just think he’s copying what he did. 

Sylvain seems into it, anyway, moaning and thrusting his hips into Felix’s hand. “Fuck, Felix - that feels so good. Yeah, just like that - ”

He keeps babbling while Felix stares at his dick. From this angle, it almost looks like a magic trick, the way it appears and disappears as his hand moves. There’s the head; then it’s gone again. 

It reminds him of those flipbooks Sylvain was obsessed with when they were younger, where turning the pages fast enough would make the drawings seem to move. Sylvain’s had all been pornographic, something he seemed to think was very impressive, but when Felix had flipped the pages at Sylvain’s insistence and watched the little drawn cocks thrust and retreat, he’d felt nothing at all. 

He feels the same way now, and he doesn’t know why. It’s not like he’s never thought about Sylvain’s dick before. He likes making Sylvain make these kinds of noises when they’re grinding together. But instead of anything sexy, all he can think is, _do I have to suck it now?_

Before he has to make a decision, Sylvain groans and comes all over his hand. It’s somehow grosser than having Beauty’s spit there, even though Felix has come all over his own hand plenty of times before. 

The thought of Beauty makes Felix smear Sylvain’s come on his pants. 

“Felix, come on!” Sylvain says. “I was going to wear these again tomorrow!” 

“You have other pants,” Felix says. “Wear those instead.” 

Sylvain groans and tackles him, which devolves into wrestling. 

By the time Felix gets sick of being tickled and jabs Sylvain in the ribs, his pants are disgusting too. But at least he feels normal again.


	3. Chapter 3

Felix wakes up alone. 

He spends a second staring up at the canvas above him, feeling the space next to him with one hand. It’s still warm, but only just. Sylvain got up early today.

Felix gets dressed in the dark, hands moving automatically to fix his belts and his hair. There’s a thousand and one things to do; he needs to check in with the stationed general, get a report on the current status of both armies, decide whether to pick up a battalion of his own, requisition a squire to do Sylvain’s armor maintenance since Sylvain won’t do it himself, do his own weapon maintenance, and check out the duty roster. And that’s if Cornelia’s army doesn’t attack today. 

There’s too much to do to bother wasting time. Even though it’s barely dawn, it seems like the whole rest of the army agrees; Felix has to dodge a squire leading a horse immediately upon exiting the tent, and from there it doesn’t stop. There are too many bodies to navigate around, too many voices to filter out. But Felix can ignore them all. Everyone is set on their own path, doing their own task. 

So Felix can be forgiven for assuming that Sylvain must be doing something productive, right up until he sees Sylvain a few tents away, giving a practiced laugh as he leans in close to a woman. 

She has dark brown hair that curls around her shoulders and a genuine smile on her face. She clearly hasn’t heard enough about Sylvain to know to shy away from him. In fact, her attention is totally fixed on Sylvain. And Sylvain’s attention is totally fixed on her; he doesn’t see Felix standing there, frozen, because he doesn’t lift his head, not even to glance around and check if anyone is watching. He just keeps talking, smiling fakely as he gestures about something or other inane. It’s like he’s completely forgotten that this is not something he’s supposed to do anymore.

Felix feels a sudden urge to draw his sword. Not to do anything with it, but just to have the comforting weight of steel in his hand. He grips its pommel tightly instead, as if that can restrain him from doing something stupid, like walking up to them and screaming in Sylvain’s face: _How could you do this to me? Don’t you know what I’ve done for you?_

But what has Felix done for Sylvain? He’d sat there and let Sylvain blow him, and then he’d given Sylvain a probably terrible handjob after. That’s the kind of stuff Sylvain was telling Felix about in breathless letters eight years ago, too-detailed updates coming one after the other: _she let me touch her breast, she let me put my mouth on her, she put her mouth on_ me _..._

Sylvain had described every step that led to him losing his virginity at the age of fifteen, despite Felix’s total lack of response, and then he’d never bothered telling Felix about anything less than times he had full-on sex ever again. Why should he? He’d moved past all that stuff years ago, at what was probably the normal pace. Why should a handjob be enough? Why should a handjob even interest him? 

Sylvain’s letters had described sex as some great adventure, a higher high each time, totally worth all his lying and cheating and stupid recklessness to get. Felix can’t help but think it’s more like fighting during Pegasus moon, unable to see the path ahead but unable to go back as every step is immediately swallowed up by the snows and howling winds. Treacherous and uncertain; the only way to go is forward into danger, and hope it’s better than standing still. 

How ridiculous. Felix has been fighting and killing and pressing forward, unable to stop himself or anyone else, since he was fifteen. He wasn’t ready then, but he adapted to survive. It’ll be his own fault if he can’t adapt to survive _this_ of all things. 

He slips away when Sylvain takes the woman’s hand and kisses it, then moves up to kiss her wrist, lingering there tenderly. What’s the point in staying? He knows how this will end.

He should go straight to the general’s tent. It would be obvious which one it was even if Felix and Sylvain’s tent wasn’t so close nearby in deference to their rank. But he doesn’t feel fit for human company at the moment, and over the years he’s gotten at least a little better at knowing when to find space to cool down instead of lashing out. So he circles around towards the outskirts of camp, where the terrain starts flattening out into something that horses could actually be useful on, and where the horses are being held. 

Beauty is in a stall of her own, sedately eating hay. She doesn’t have a care in the world. She can love Sylvain without worrying about him or what he’s doing; she can fight without knowing that it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have the brains to know that there is another fight around the corner, and then another, stretching forth endlessly, with only one possible end. 

Felix grips the stall door with both hands, watching her strong neck flex. It’s ridiculous, envying an animal, but Felix has long passed the point of balking at being ridiculous. 

He reaches out with one hand, patting her neck tentatively, then pulls his hand back quickly as Beauty’s head comes back up. He wasn’t expecting her to respond; surely her breakfast is more interesting than him. But her head stays up, swinging over the stall’s half-door to nose at her hair. 

Felix stands there stiffly, tensing at the feel of horselip against his face. He’s not scared of her, but he was scared of horses as a child. Sylvain is one of a handful of people still alive who might remember that. Felix had been scared of horses, and cows, and large dogs, but had charged fearlessly through the woods, not caring at all about the wolves and foxes there. 

Sylvain had thought it was funny, even when Felix tried to explain. Wolves and foxes he can fight, or at least try to keep at arm’s length. But with domestic animals, he has to live with them. He can’t draw his sword every time a dog walks up to him, or every time a horse he’s brushing turns her neck around to see what he’s doing. He just has to stand there and let them get too close to him, only finding out if they’re going to decide to bite after the fact.

Beauty doesn’t bite him. Felix didn’t think she would, but he still only relaxes once she goes back to her hay.

The movement reveals something else, though - a patch on the other side of Beauty’s neck that’s raw and bleeding. Felix frowns and calls over a stableboy. “What’s that on her neck?” 

The stableboy peers close. “Just some bite marks,” he says. “She was bullying her next-door neighbor a bit last night. Looks like the other horse got sick of it and fought back.” 

“You don’t do anything about that?” 

The stableboy shrugs. “Horses fight when they’re stressed, same as people. Lots of unfamiliar horses in the same place means lots of stress, especially with the ones who’ve already made it through some battles. They’ll keep on biting each other or they’ll learn to put up with each other, but there’s nowhere to move her.” 

So much for thinking she’s too dumb to have worries. Felix lets him go, then frowns at Beauty. “Don’t be an idiot,” he says. “You have enough fighting to do without fighting your comrades.”

Beauty doesn’t respond, because she’s a fucking horse. 

Felix groans at himself and finally goes to seek out the general. 

General Rhodos is a woman from his father’s generation. Quite literally; they were classmates together at Garreg Mach, he thinks his father said once, and when he walks into her tent, the first thing she says is, “you’re Rodrigue’s boy.” 

Felix bites his tongue on the first thing he wants to say in response to that. He also has enough fighting to do without fighting his comrades. “I’m here with Sylvain Gautier,” he says. “We’re supposed to check on things and report back, but we’ll fight as needed.”

“Will you, now,” Rhodos says, mouth twisting as she eyes him. “Well, I can’t say you aren’t needed. You’re the one with the Major Crest, right? Have a seat, I’ll show you how things are going.”

How things are going: not well, of course. Felix has long since stopped expecting otherwise. Their troops have been whittled down over the years to less than half of what they started with; Cornelia has much fewer qualms about starving her citizenry than the Kingdom does, so her soldiers are better-fed and better-equipped; and she keeps getting fresh reinforcements from the Empire. 

“But our positioning is good,” Rhodos says, sorting through the mess of papers on her desk and handing the relevant ones to Felix as she goes. “It could be a lot worse.”

Their positioning is good because the Faerghus Dukedom has been chipping away at them for years, forcing them into retreat after retreat, until Blaiddyd Pass became the new front line. But Rhodos isn’t wrong. With the mountain ridge at their back and a long, flat valley ahead of them, they’re well-positioned to pick off enemies from a distance with bow units, give their fliers places to quickly land and take off again, and clean up any infantry with their cavalry at the beginning of the plains. 

“They’ve been sending out more scouts, which usually means another attack is imminent,” Rhodos says. “We’re trying to use our own infantry units as little as possible as they’re not the most effective on this terrain, but if you hear the horn sound for the cavalry, I’d like you to charge in here, since you can do more than the average unmounted unit.” 

Felix looks where she indicates on the map. “You’re using the cavalry in single-line charges,” he says. “It’s a good tactic for the terrain.” He might have hated sitting through strategy and tactics lectures at school, but he can see how effective a technique a full-line charge at the enemy is, assuming the cavalry can keep a fixed distance from one another and charge at a gallop. It’s a tactic that takes a lot of practice and has little room for error; Rhodos must have a lot of faith in her cavalry. “Sylvain will be more effective with his battalion, though.” 

“He’s got that lance his father’s so obsessed with, doesn’t he?” Rhodos asks, tapping the page before her with one finger as she thinks. “Awful thing. But useful, and unique. You’re right, there’s no point trying to match him to the other cavalry units, especially as he hasn’t trained with them. I’ll have him charge ahead of you, then. He can scatter the infantry with his battalion and you can pick them off.”

Felix nods, though inevitably he and Sylvain will end up fighting side by side, with Sylvain’s battalion cleaning up the broken lines of the enemy infantry instead. The specifics don’t matter as long as he and Sylvain get positioned near enough to watch each other’s backs. 

“What about our own scouts?” He asks. “How much warning will we have?”

Rhodos sighs. “Felix,” she says, startling Felix; he’d honestly thought Rhodos didn’t know his name, thinking of him only as _Rodrigue’s son_ , or perhaps _Rodrigue’s remaining son_. “If we get any warning at all, it’ll be a blessing from the Goddess herself.” 

“Your horse is a menace,” Felix informs Sylvain when he finds him in the mess tent, throwing himself bodily next to Sylvain and crossing his arms. 

“Bwty?” Sylvain says through a mouthful of bread before remembering to swallow before talking. “What did Beauty do?” 

Felix snags part of Sylvain’s bread. It’s a dense, dark loaf, the kind of thing the army bakes in huge quantities by cobbling together whatever they have on hand, and he doubts it’s going to taste good. “She’s been bullying her stallmates,” he says before taking a bite. He was right; it tastes like sawdust. Still, he intends to eat the rest of it. He’s just going to finish what he has to say first, because he has table manners. “She’s been biting them. Apparently the mare in the next stall over finally got sick of it and bit back.” 

“Aw, Beauty,” Sylvain sighs. “She’s so pretty, but so ornery. Like someone else I know.”

“Fuck you,” Felix says, and steals a bit of Sylvain’s stew to wet his bread in hopes that it’ll improve the texture. It does, at the cost of somehow worsening the taste. 

Sylvain bumps him with his shoulder cheerfully. “You’re both nice when it counts,” he says. “You just need to be rubbed the right way.” His shoulder then lingers against Felix’s, rubbing suggestively.

“You realize that it’s things like this that caused all those rumors about you and horses, right?” Felix asks, though he doesn’t pull his shoulder away. “You can only talk about rubbing animals so many times without giving people a certain impression.”

Sylvain sputters. “Hey now, those rumors were Seteth’s fault! He spread them deliberately to keep Flayn from talking to me. That guy was so overprotective. Unnecessarily so, in fact. Flayn was way too clever to fall for a guy like me.” 

_So what does that say about me?_ Felix almost says. He takes a bite of his awful-tasting bread instead, glowering at nothing. 

He wonders if Sylvain fucked that woman from this morning. He must have, right? Sylvain’s very determined when he wants to be, and very strategically-minded. Flirting and kissing are tactics to him, not things that matter for their own sake. He deploys them as necessary to get what he really wants. It’s not like he ever kisses _Felix_ just to kiss him, either. 

It’s such an obvious pattern, yet Felix really thought he’d break it just by existing. He doubts that says anything good about him. 

“I wonder what happened to Flayn,” Sylvain says, frowning down at his stew. “I didn’t hear about anything happening to her or Seteth...but then, I guess I wouldn’t have, if something did.”

Felix spent years learning how to convert every emotion into anger. If his feelings felt dangerous, at least he could point them outwards instead of inwards. But that serious look on Sylvain’s face flips the dagger towards his own stomach again. Without even thinking about it, he swallows down his anger and his instinct to say something true but terrible, and it feels like he’s swallowed something whose sharp edges will tear at him sooner or later. 

“Nothing happened to Flayn,” Felix says. “Seteth wouldn’t even let her dance with anyone at the ball. The second Edelgard attacked, I’m sure he threw her over his shoulder and left Fódlan on foot. Seteth is probably hovering stupidly over her somewhere on the Albinean Coast as we speak.” 

Then he shoves the remaining bit of bread into his mouth and makes more work of chewing it than is really necessary. That’s it; that’s his limit for saying comforting things he doesn’t really believe. 

It makes Sylvain prop his face up on his hand and smile at him, at least, though his smile is sad. “Probably,” he says, and passes Felix the rest of his bread. 

Rhodos was right; there’s no warning blasts of the horn before the screaming starts.

Felix and Sylvain share a look as they both drop what they were doing - sword maintenance and letter writing respectively - to scramble into readiness. The horns come then, as Sylvain tears off towards the stable and Felix runs for the front line. 

Felix already relayed Rhodos’s orders to Sylvain; with all the chaos and the screaming and the running, it’ll probably take them both the same amount of time to actually get in position. Felix isn’t worried about that as he darts around a knight frantically pulling gear onto her pegasus, then through a group of bow knights rushing towards the ridges to reinforce the squads already positioned there. 

Instead, Felix abruptly finds himself worrying about not fucking dying, when he breaks through to the front and finds a Demonic Beast tearing through the cavalry, the enemy’s own cavalry units a dark mass in the distance creeping closer. 

A volley of arrows rains down from overhead, bouncing off of its dark, stone-thick hide as it screams, tossing its head to impale a lancer with the giant horn on the end of its snout. It turns its head again, and another body is skewered on its horn, the soldiers’ lifeless arms flapping as the Demonic Beast roars. 

How did they not have any warning? Felix thinks, heart pounding as the air fills with the screams of dying soldiers and horses, grip tightening on his sword. But then he remembers the crest stones Edelgard stole from the monastery all those years ago, and suddenly he can see it: a single soldier, crawling through the grass on his belly, carefully hidden until the moment he closes his fist around a crest stone and becomes something far worse. 

He swears to himself, jumping over a body as he readies his hands for a Thoron. 

It hits, and it hits hard - the Demonic Beast recoils, its backwards-jointed legs buckling before it recovers, turning to face Felix with a snarl. But this suits Felix just fine - he dodges the Demonic Beast’s horn, rolling away from it, and this gives the surviving cavalry units time to recover. They circle the Beast, lances moving forward in unison, and someone must be lucky enough to score a hit, because the Beast howls and rolls, killing another man in the process. 

Felix grits his teeth and charges before the Demonic Beast can get back up, scoring a wide gash across one of its legs - which then kicks out, crashing into Felix’s shoulder with a crunch of bone and sending him hurtling to skid on his back against the valley floor. 

It’s hard to tell what hurts worse, his newly-skinned back or his broken shoulder, but he uses the momentum to flip himself up without stopping, swapping his sword to his other hand as he does so. It was a bad hit - but it was a bad hit for both of them; the Demonic Beast’s armor is cracked all the way up its side, starting from where Felix had ripped open its leg. That leg drags behind it now, barely mobile, and the cracked armor leaves the Beast vulnerable to attack from that quarter. 

More arrows rain from above, some of them landing true, and the Demonic Beast shrieks and whips its head and massive spiked tail around. More lancers fall; one body is thrown so far Felix has to roll to dodge it, gasping as his shoulder grinds in its socket. 

“Felix!” Someone shouts - and it’s Sylvain, of course it’s Sylvain, finally riding in, Beauty prancing nervously as Sylvain urges her sideways to reach Felix, his battalion trooping in behind him. There’s blood down the side of his face and he’s already lost a stirrup, but otherwise he looks fine. 

“You’re late,” Felix says as Sylvain casts a shimmering Heal over him. He rotates his shoulder; still a little tender, but it’ll hold up.

“Yeah, sorry, there was a Giant Bird on the way to the stable,” Sylvain says. He looks Felix up and down intently, like Felix is going to start spontaneously bleeding from something else. When he doesn’t, Sylvain quickly turns back to his battalion. “You guys ready for a Gambit?” 

The Gautier Knights chime their agreement. As they move into position, Felix circles around to the other side. 

Half the battalion falls before the Demonic Beast does, but finally it collapses, its giant maw hanging open lifelessly on top of the pile of corpses it has made. Sylvain pulls his lance out of its eye while Felix pulls his sword out of its belly. He has to stand on a corpse to get the leverage to pull it out, and some soft part of it squishes under his foot. 

When he hops back down, Sylvain is scanning him over again. “You’re okay, right?”

Sylvain’s chestplate is also freshly dented. “Worry about yourself, fool,” Felix says, fumbling in his side pocket for a vulnerary. “Did you even bring any potions?”

“Uh…”

“Unbelievable.” Felix grabs a handful of Beauty’s mane for leverage as he shoves the vulnerary into Sylvain’s hand, which ends up working against him when Beauty flinches hard, yanking her head away from him. He stumbles into a fall, then back onto his feet while Sylvain pats Beauty’s neck frantically, still holding the vulnerary with his other hand. “Drink it already!” Felix yells, and that’s all he has time to say before the enemy cavalry is upon them. 

Felix tears through the enemy units, muscle memory combining with instinct and the desperate, quick thinking one does on the battlefield. He covers Sylvain’s back long enough for Sylvain to finally down the potion, and then for a heartstopping few minutes he loses track of Sylvain entirely, too busy fighting through waves of enemies to handle the distraction of searching for him. 

Finally, stepping over his own pile of corpses, he scans the battlefield for him. There are the remnants of his battalion - there are some infantry units, coming in as reinforcements - where’s Sylvain? 

There - Felix swings around to look at him fully, pushed yards away and caught between a Dark Mage and a Fortress Knight. His battalion is too far away to help and caught up with their own enemies, but Felix doesn’t have to worry about matching formation - he darts towards Sylvain, boots squelching in ground turned muddy by all the blood, barely noticing the infantry unit that tries to block his path long enough to cut them down. 

Sylvain’s lance goes through the mage’s chest, but that leaves him vulnerable when the Fortress Knight swings his axe. He yanks the reins, but not fast enough - Beauty’s head whips around, and then the axe is slicing a line down her neck. 

She screams, rearing back. Sylvain yells with her, toppling off the side of the saddle that had lost a stirrup. 

Felix thinks he screams, too. He can’t tell. He’s running, but he’s not going to be fast enough - Sylvain is on the ground, fumbling for his lance, and the Fortress Knight is pulling his axe back for another swing - 

But Beauty, bloodied but not defeated, recovers; she falls forward from her rearing, her front hooves shoving hard into the Fortress Knight’s armor.

The knight’s arms windmill, but he’s unable to stop himself from toppling over, onto his back. His armor is heavier than Sylvain’s; he’s still on his back when Sylvain gets his knees under him, and when Felix finally reaches them, driving his sword through the knight’s helmet slit with all his might, not stopping until his sword is lodged in the earth underneath and the knight is perfectly still.

“Not bad,” Sylvain pants, “not bad at all.” He winces as he gets to his feet, but he doesn’t look too injured to Felix. And he barely limps as he makes his way over to Beauty, who is shaking all over, blood still falling from her big, raw eye and down her neck. “Hey, girl, come on,” he murmurs to her, fingers lighting up on another Heal. He trembles with the effort, but Felix doesn’t say anything about it. 

Beauty’s still shaking when the horns sound again - four short blasts. _Retreat; the battle is lost._

Felix and Sylvain exchange a grim glance. “All this for nothing,” Sylvain says, mouth flattened. 

_It’s all for nothing,_ Felix almost says, but he’s too tired. Instead he offers Sylvain his shoulder, and together with Beauty they manage to limp over the ridge before the next wave of enemy soldiers engulfs it and claims it as their own.

They stumble over where the rest of the army has parked itself mostly by chance and dumb luck. They’re wedged halfway down the mountainside, a ragtag jumble of battalions all hunched together, licking their wounds. 

There are noticeably fewer of them than there were at the camp at Blaiddyd Pass. “Did we really lose half our army?” Sylvain asks, shocked.

“Things are _really_ not going well,” Felix says, which isn’t funny but sends Sylvain into hysterics anyway, wheezing so hard Felix worries he’s busted a rib on the insides of his dented armor. 

A very tired healer looks them both over, sparing the effort to fully heal Felix’s shoulder and Sylvain’s leg before moving on without a word. It’s not the extent of either of their injuries, but it’s the most they can ask for after that kind of loss. 

They certainly can’t ask for Beauty to be healed. They might be running low on horses, but they’re running even lower on men, and the way Sylvain hardly fusses over her leads Felix to believe she’s not gravely injured. In fact, she looks more alert than either of them; her eye is still puffy and red, but her head swings back and forth nervously, her neck flexing with no apparent pain. 

Felix pats her shoulder once, a stiff thank-you for saving Sylvain when he hadn’t been fast enough. She shies away.

Sylvain leads her off in one direction while Felix tries to find whatever command structure is left. That ends up being Rhodos, who looks even more tired but hardly on death’s doorstep, though she snorts when Felix asks her what’s next.

“What’s next is you go home,” she says. “You were supposed to see the situation and report back. Well, you’ve seen the situation. It’s not going to change. The Goddess has no blessings left for us.” 

Felix frowns. “We can do more here,” he says, though he’s not sure they can. 

Rhodos just shakes her head. “Go home,” she repeats. “There’s no reason for you to die here if you don’t have to.”  
“What reason is there for _you_ to die here?” Felix snarls, suddenly angry. 

Rhodos says nothing. She just looks through him until Felix, frustrated, turns and leaves.

Sylvain has scrounged up a tent from somewhere. A benefit of rank, Felix supposes as he crawls into it, Sylvain following close after him. 

“So, back to Gautier,” Sylvain sighs. “That’s going to go over well with my old man.” 

“You can come back to Fraldarius with me instead,” Felix snorts. “Since it’s about to become a battlefront as well.” 

Sylvain doesn’t say anything, frowning up at the ceiling of the tent with his arms folded behind his head. This silence is easy to read: with Blaiddyd Pass and Conand captured, Fraldarius and Gautier have been cut off from Galatea and Charon. The Kingdom has been cut in half once more. Everywhere is about to become a battlefront.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note: there's a panic attack in this chapter. If you want to skip it, stop reading at "warmed all the way through"

Felix wakes up the next morning to Sylvain’s mouth against his bare thigh. 

“Good morning,” Sylvain purrs, licking up Felix’s inner thigh towards his groin. 

With extreme effort, Felix manages to restrain the urge to kick him in the face. But only just. He can’t help but remember that he was wearing underwear last night, and now he can’t feel anything on his body at all. Sylvain took it off of him without Felix noticing. And he knows it’s because he trusts Sylvain. No one else could touch him in his sleep without waking him up. But in that moment, as Sylvain brings his mouth to Felix’s cock, he feels like he shouldn’t trust Sylvain at all. 

He lies there, stiff and unmoving, as Sylvain does all the work: sucking hard at the head, tonguing his slit, swallowing him down inch by inch only to come up again and do it over again. He watches Sylvain’s head move up and down his cock, and mostly he feels tired. 

Eventually Sylvain pulls off, rubbing his jaw and laughing. “You have to show me how you do that,” Sylvain teases, replacing his mouth with his hand. “Most people last a little longer after the first few times, but you’re on a whole different level.” 

“Mental discipline,” Felix says lamely, but it must pass as a dry joke, because Sylvain laughs again. He spends a little while longer languidly stroking Felix’s cock before leaning back down to take one of Felix’s balls into his mouth, rolling it on his tongue to feel the thin skin there before moving on to the other one. Then he goes back to Felix’s cock, taking just the head of it into his mouth and sucking, which seems to be easier on his jaw. 

Felix reaches down with one hand to pet Sylvain’s hair. It’s thick and soft under his fingers, and stroking it feels comforting. 

Sylvain’s eyes flash open. He pulls off of Felix’s cock long enough to say, “pull it,” and then he’s going back down again with - somehow - even more enthusiasm. 

Pull...his hair? Felix gives it an experimental tug, and Sylvain groans around the head of his cock, like that’s doing it for him. Emboldened, Felix twists his other hand in Sylvain’s hair too and pulls with both hands. Sylvain lets that pull him down Felix’s cock, which Felix supposes is the point of this, so he then tugs Sylvain up by the hair, then does it again. 

Sylvain moans, so loud it’s a little embarrassing, and squirms. He seems to be enjoying having Felix’s cock in his mouth more than Felix is.

Still, the thing Sylvain said about Felix lasting a long time - that’s weird, isn’t it? Felix tugs at Sylvain’s hair again and tries to think of ways to come faster. Could he pretend this is like masturbating? Between his hands fisted tightly in Sylvain’s hair and the steady movement of his hips, he’s being a lot more active, now. But the whole problem is that he’s not really in the mood. He wouldn’t be masturbating now anyway. 

He focuses on Sylvain instead. Sylvain’s eyes are screwed shut, and he keeps moaning and squirming. It’s hot, hotter than being touched when he’s not into it; even when tired in a way that goes beyond the physical, there’s something deeply satisfying about affecting Sylvain like this. 

So he watches every little expression that plays over Sylvain’s face, and he remembers to tug on Sylvain’s hair rhythmically, and eventually he comes in Sylvains mouth again. 

It’s fine. He felt bad the last time, but clearly it’s getting better. Maybe eventually he’ll be able to feel nothing at all no matter what they’re doing. 

His newfound calm helps push him toward something he knows he has to do anyway. “I could do the same thing to you,” he says as Sylvain sits up again, looking away as he says it. It’s fine; he knows Sylvain will just read it as embarrassment. 

Sure enough, Sylvain lets out a breathy laugh. “I’d like that a lot, though I don’t think I’m going to last nearly as long as you.” 

Thank all the fucking Saints for that. 

He bends forward on his elbows to put his face at about the level of Sylvain’s dick. It’s hard and leaking, the head already smeared messily with wetness. Felix is hardly the expert on genitals in this relationship, but Sylvain looks pretty close. This should be easy. 

Felix wraps a hand around the base and guides the tip into his mouth. 

Sylvain jumps. “Little less with the teeth,” he manages, and Felix realizes belatedly that he didn’t feel Sylvain’s teeth at all. He awkwardly curls his lips over his teeth, then sucks tentatively, not sure if he’s doing it right. But Sylvain offers no more objections. He just sucks in an audible breath through his own mouth, then exhales shakily. So Felix can’t be doing too badly. 

He takes in a little more. It’s big and fits awkwardly, bumping against his hard palate before Felix adjusts the angle of his head. 

Sylvain puts a hand on top of his head. If he’s going to pull his hair, Felix will kill him, reciprocation or no reciprocation. But Sylvain just strokes his hair, his breath still coming out in little shaky gasps. “That’s really good, Felix,” he says, rubbing his thumb against Felix’s temple affectionately. “You can use your hand at the base - yeah, like that, that’s great.” Felix moves his hand in time with his mouth, and Sylvain’s breath stutters. 

Felix feels a pang of accomplishment at the sound of it. It is instantly drowned out by a flood of resentment. He can see how this could be fun for him, in some different world where he only did this when he wanted to. He can see how he’d get competitive about taking more of Sylvain in, and proud about the sounds he would wring out of Sylvain. He can even see liking Sylvain’s cock in his mouth for its own sake, in some world where he was comfortable with Sylvain’s cock being bare around him before they started. 

But this isn’t that world, there’s no time left for it to become that world, and when he angrily sucks harder, it’s mostly because he wants this to be over already.

Sylvain doesn’t know that; instead he groans, and thrusts, and then says “oh shit, sorry,” while Felix pulls off to cough, his throat spasming just from that one touch. Not that it’s any wonder, when he’s wound up so tight. It’s not like his own orgasm was particularly relaxing, either.

He gets back to it, though, sucking resignedly while Sylvain pets him and babbles endearments and swears. He wasn’t joking about not lasting long, at least; after only a few more moments of that, Sylvain spends in his mouth. 

It’d be less messy to swallow. But just the thought of it makes Felix’s gorge rise, so instead he spits to the side. 

“Gross, Felix,” Sylvain says affectionately, still petting Felix’s hair. 

“Shut up,” Felix groans. “This tent has seen worse.” 

It has; Felix’s clothes from yesterday, stained with blood and gore, definitely qualify, and they’re strewn messily on the other side of the tent. He sees now that his underwear has been thrown on top of his pants. Considerate, almost, even though it makes him want to hit Sylvain all over again. Instead, he gets up to get dressed. 

Felix has other clothes somewhere. Possibly behind the line of what is now Dukedom territory. He has no idea how far back they retreated. All these ridges look the same. For all he knows, their tent is now being squatted in by some poor idiot who’s about to be selected to become Cornelia’s next Demonic Beast. So instead of searching aimlessly for those, he puts on his own clothes, scowling at the way Sylvain’s nose wrinkles. “Don’t be childish about it,” he says. “We’ll find a stream along the way.” 

Sylvain, dressing himself in clothes that are cleaner by virtue of being worn under armor, sighs. “Yeah, yeah...I’ll get used to the smell again fast, I guess.” 

Sylvain peels off to go find his horse and supplies; Felix goes in search of breakfast and someone with a better sense of the territory. He finds both not too far from where he slept in the form of a hulking man bent over a soup pot in what is now the new mess tent. 

The man is rapidly running out of bowls and who knows where the one that’s supposed to stay on Felix’s person ended up, but the man agreeably fills up Felix’s waterskin with the lukewarm soup instead. At least that way he and Sylvain will be able to pass it back and forth as they walk and distract themselves from the taste. Felix also finds out that they’ve ceded less territory than he thought. Not that it matters; the important part is that they lost their position, and with half the soldiers dead and little hope of new reinforcements, they’re going to keep losing ground faster.

“Thanks,” he says anyway. The man gives a nod back, reserved but friendly, before focusing all his attention back on his cooking, and for a second Felix is reminded of Dedue so strongly that he has to take a moment to stand there and just breathe.

Pathetic. He never even liked Dedue. 

From their current position, it’d be a five-day walk to Gautier or a four-day ride in a fairly straight line, cutting through Itha. Felix has never been that way, and he’s pretty sure Sylvain hasn’t, either. It’s a three-day walk to Fraldarius, then from there another three-day walk to Gautier, since Sylvain never hurries back if he doesn’t have to. There’s every chance that Sylvain will take an extra day or two at Fraldarius, ostensibly to resupply but really just to spend time with Felix. 

Four or five days spent almost entirely alone with Sylvain sounds like the best thing Felix could ask for right about now, except maybe for divine intervention from the Goddess herself or for the Adrestian Emperor to choke to death on a meat skewer. Despite the circumstances, Felix feels almost good about things.

This is a mistake, because it makes it all the more startling when Sylvain comes back leading a dun mare who is clearly not Beauty. 

Felix doesn’t even comprehend it at first. He just stands there, staring mutely as Sylvain chatters at him. “I hope you got something to eat, because I’m ready to get going,” he says, messing around with his saddlebags. The new horse stands patiently still as he does so, completely unlike the way Beauty would lash her tail, agitated even when nothing was happening. “I was able to get a change of clothes for you, so we better find that stream quickly. No spare tents though, so we’ll have to camp out under the stars, like the good old days. I got some dry rations, but we might want to hunt along the way, just so…” He finally turns, words dying as he sees the look on Felix’s face. “Felix?”

“Did something happen to Beauty?” Felix finally asks. “Did she get worse?” He’d thought that Sylvain’s Heal got rid of most of the damage; she’d certainly looked well enough to serve as their packhorse for the next few days the last time he saw her. But camps are dirty places. Did she get an infection?

But Sylvain’s shaking his head. “No, no, she’s fine! All healed up, in fact - it turns out the damage to her eye wasn’t as bad as it looked. She can still see out of it and everything. But I guess it got to her. The stablehands said she’s been nervy ever since. She almost bolted when I tried to put a saddle on her. So I swapped her for a steadier horse.” Sylvain smiles and pats the new horse’s neck fondly, the exact same way he always patted Beauty. “What do you think I should name her? Apparently her last rider called her Matilda, but I don’t think it suits her.” 

“You swapped her?” Felix repeats. 

“Yes?” Now Sylvian just looks confused. “Benefits of rank, I guess? It’s unfair, but it’s easy to trade up for a cavalry-ready horse when you’re a noble.”

“I meant - you got rid of her because you had to take an extra second to calm her down before touching her?” 

Sylvain frowns at him. “Well, that extra second is kind of important in battle…”

“We’re not going into battle,” Felix snaps, though they might be. Who knows what’s going to come pouring out of Conand? “Beauty carried you through countless battles and even saved your life in the last one, and you’re not even going to bring her back as far as Fraldarius? You’re just going to leave her here?” 

“Felix…” Sylvain says hesitantly. And then, clever idiot that he is, he asks, “are we...still talking about the horse?” 

There’s nothing good Felix can possibly say to that, so instead he just turns on his heel and leaves, trying to swallow down the tightness in his throat as he goes. He ends up nearly choking on it, slapping a hand over his mouth to keep anything from coming out.

“Felix!” And there comes the familiar sound of Sylvain’s feet and a horse’s hooves chasing after him. 

This time, Felix doesn’t slow down to make it easier for Sylvain to catch up. It’s a long walk to Fraldarius. He should be able to spend some of it not looking at Sylvain.

Sylvain makes a couple attempts to start a conversation, making it through one sentence and then faltering when Felix doesn’t say anything, even though Sylvain is usually perfectly capable of carrying on talking even if his target isn’t willing to contribute. He mumbles a thank you when Felix silently stuffs his waterskin into his hands, but after that, he stops trying. 

The silence hangs over them like a fourth member of their little party until they cross a river a few hours later and Felix remembers his promise to bathe. It’s as good a time as any, since even sticking to the shallowest part of the river, they’re soaked to the knee by the time they get to the opposite bank, so Felix tells Sylvain to wait and starts taking off his clothes. 

“You said you have another set, right?” Felix asks.

“Yeah,” Sylvain says hesitantly. “I’ll put them down over here, if that works for you.” 

“Whatever.” 

Sylvain brings the clothes over slowly as Felix drags himself and his filthy, bloodstained kit back into the water. He puts the fresh clothes down by Felix’s boots, looking at Felix the whole time, like Felix is going to leap out of the water and attack him.

His carefulness just makes Felix more angry. He scowls, scrubbing himself furiously with handfuls of river water while Sylvain stands at the bank, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. 

“I liked Beauty a lot,” Sylvain says, still watching Felix for a reaction. 

Felix focuses on getting the blood out from under his fingernails. Somehow it always seeps in past his gloves.

It seems like not being snapped at is encouragement enough for Sylvain. He keeps talking. “But you go through horses pretty quickly in the cavalry. I’ve had to switch horses because my old one had a strained tendon, or got kicked by another horse, or just plain bolted. I once had a horse get stolen while I was still in the stable with it!” He gives a fake little laugh. “It’s unfortunate, but the truth is that you can’t get too attached to a cavalry horse. Not that you’re too attached! I just mean - you’re not used to being around horses, but I am, so I’m used to having to swap a lot. You understand, right?”

Felix grunts and moves on to cleaning his neck. He understands just fine. Sylvain treats horses like he treats his bed partners; with enough tenderness and affection that they all think they’re unique, up until he’s moving onto the next one. Is there anything in all of Fódlan that Sylvain wouldn’t casually trade in for a replacement? 

But he feels himself deflating anyway. He knows he’s being ridiculous, from the perspective of just talking about horses. In fact, now that he thinks about it, he already knew Sylvain goes through horses quickly. Sylvain certainly isn’t riding the same horse he did at school, and he can faintly recall a lot of variation in the horses Sylvain has had with him in the years since. 

But he didn’t pay attention to those other horses and he certainly didn’t sleep near them night after night as they camped together through what remains of the Kingdom. Beauty has been Sylvain’s mount since he and Felix got together, and so Felix ended up getting to know her better than any of Sylvain’s horses before. 

But that didn’t make her special. Not to Sylvain, anyway. 

“If you’re done with the soup, toss the waterskin over,” Felix says as a peace offering. 

Sylvain beams, understanding the gesture for what it is. “Yeah, right away!” 

Felix drags his newly-cleaned clothes over to a rock to drip dry, then takes the waterskin from Sylvain’s hand. 

As he’s washing it out and refilling it, Sylvain continues cheerfully. “Beauty’s going to be just fine. She’ll get taken out of the cavalry and put in a paddock somewhere, or else end up pulling a plough. She’s going to have a better life than I could ever give her.” 

Goddess, is this the breakup speech Sylvain gives to everyone, women and horses alike?

Probably not. Sylvain only dumps the horses; he cheats on the women and waits for them to dump him instead. The joke’s on Sylvain this time, though. Felix doesn’t have it left in him to dump Sylvain, no matter how careless he is.

“So there’s really not any use in me worrying about her,” Sylvain says, his eyes locking onto Felix’s. “I’m better off focusing on who I might get to keep, if I’m really lucky.”

And if Sylvain’s going to break his pattern and dump _him_ , it’s not going to happen today. Felix should probably be happy about that, but he dismisses Sylvain with a roll of his eyes, deliberately swinging a shoulder around so he doesn’t have to look at Sylvain as he waits to see how his line landed. 

Sylvain falls silent after that, but when Felix crawls out of the river, there’s a troubled look on his face. He hovers as Felix wrings out his wet clothes and drapes them over the replacement horse’s saddle, sticking so close as Felix dresses that Felix can’t help eyeing him. Is he still worried that Felix is angry? 

Felix is fine. Or at least, Felix is no angrier than usual. He’s had years to get used to a certain background hum of rage and bitterness; it’s not going to overwhelm him as long as they don’t fight any more, and Felix doesn’t want to fight.

Sylvain doesn’t seem to want to, either. He goes back to talking to Felix, but he doesn’t bounce back all the way when Felix responds normally. He keeps hovering, walking too close to Felix and then withdrawing like he doesn’t know what to do with himself, over and over again as they walk.

“What’s wrong with you?” Felix finally snaps at him. 

“Nothing, nothing,” Sylvain says with that supremely fake smile of his. 

He’s still hovering when they set up camp for the night, trailing after Felix like a puppy while Felix gathers wood for a fire. “I can light it,” Sylvain says quickly, bringing his hands up to cast Fire.

Felix gets between him and the newly-built firepit quickly. “Don’t be an idiot, you’ll end up lighting the whole forest on fire,” he says, taking his flint off his belt instead. “Don’t you remember that lecture Manuela gave us about not using combat magic for noncombat tasks?”

“Oh yeah,” Sylvain says, shrugging sheepishly. “I guess I forgot.” He doesn’t follow it up with any fond remembrances; he just lets the conversation stop dead there, even though he’s never handled silence well.

Once the fire is lit, Felix twists around to look at him. “Are you sick or something?” He asks.

“Who, me?” Sylvain laughs. “No, I’m fine. I just want to…” He hesitates for a second, as if gathering himself. Then he crowds in closer to Felix’s back, his palm sliding underneath Felix’s oversized shirt to run hotly up his side. 

Has he been weird all day because he’s feeling horny? Felix rolls his eyes so hard he’s surprised they don’t fall out of his head. But Sylvain’s hand does feel nice as it runs slowly over his stomach, caressing his abs, before trailing back up to rub over his chest. And it’s soothing having Sylvain at his back, nosing at his hair like it smells delicious.

“Hey, Felix,” Sylvain says into the back of his head, ducking down to leave a kiss on the side of his neck. “Can I have you?”

“You do have me,” Felix says, confused. Sylvain _always_ has him. 

Sylvain’s other arm wraps around him in a hug, squishing him closer as Sylvain laughs into his hair. “Aw, Felix…” he says, and Felix can tell exactly which smile is on his face without seeing it. “I meant…” 

Sylvain backs up carefully, pulling Felix down as he goes, until Felix is on his back in front of the fire. Then Sylvain crawls back over him, lowering himself down on his forearms to kiss Felix breathless. 

Felix stifles the instinctive thread of alarm he feels now when Sylvain kisses him and wraps his arms around Sylvain’s back, pressing up against him as he kisses back. Sylvain’s not quite as clean as he is, still smelling like his own sweat and blood, but Felix doesn’t mind. He presses their hips together, grinding up as he goes, enjoying the way Sylvain gasps into his mouth when Felix lets one hand wander down and grab his ass. 

“Felix,” Sylvian whispers tenderly against his lips, kissing him more chastely before hauling himself up on one hand and starting to tug at Felix’s shirt with the other, abruptly ending the part of this that Felix actually likes.

He’s resigned to that at this point. Maybe it’s a form of progress; he doesn’t stiffen up at all as he wriggles out of his clothes, even though being naked while Sylvain stares at him still makes him want to cover himself right back up. And stare Sylvain does, licking his lips as he shrugs out of his own clothes. He only looks away once they’re both naked, and that’s to gather their clothes up. 

“Budge up,” Sylvain instructs, and Felix slides over to watch Sylvain layer their clothes into a thin patchwork mattress, just long enough for Felix’s upper body to fit on it. “There, I think that’ll be more comfortable.” 

It is, Felix finds as he warily lies back down on it, his knees drawn up. It’s considerate of Sylvain, though it’s not like they don’t sleep on the cold, hard ground all the time. Felix doesn’t need consideration. “It’s good,” he says anyway. 

Sylvain beams. “I’m glad,” he says, leaning back over Felix. “I was kind of hoping we’d do this somewhere a little nicer the first time, but I don’t want to wait anymore.” 

Goddess. Felix puts his hand over his eyes so Sylvain can’t see the pure rage that he’s certain fills them in that moment. _This_ is the first time? What was everything before, practice? 

He hears a rustle above him, then hot breath against his lips a split second before Sylvain kisses him. “Don’t be embarrassed,” Sylvain whispers against his lips, then kisses him again. “I’m going to make sure it’s good for you.” 

Felix moves his hand from his eyes to Sylvain’s hair, twisting it in his fist the way Sylvain apparently likes as he meets Sylvain for the next kiss, deepening it. Everything before didn’t even amount to the level of practice for Sylvain, he thinks as he strokes Sylvain’s tongue with his own. Everything Felix cringed from, every too-soon touch that made him panic, was just Sylvain gentling him, like he’s a horse liable to spook. Like he’s Beauty, already taking an unacceptably long time to calm down and looking more and more like he needs to be replaced by a better option.

As if he would accept being left behind. Felix rises to the challenge, his legs opening wider as he lifts his feet to dig them into the sides of Sylvain’s thighs. “Gonna fuck me?” He whispers back. 

“Goddess, Felix…” Sylvain folds his legs back, moving down over Felix’s body to kiss his neck, then his chest. “You’re going to feel so good, I promise.” 

Felix jolts as Sylvain licks his nipple. It feels - okay? Not _good_ , necessarily, but Felix has already established that he’s not going to stop Sylvain no matter what he does. So Felix arches into it, feeling foolish as Sylvain sucks his nipple into his mouth. But the heat of Sylvain’s mouth feels like a direct line to his cock, which twitches in response against his abdomen, between their bodies. 

“Yeah, that’s it,” Sylvain says, stroking Felix’s other nipple with his fingertips. “That feel good?”

“Yes,” Felix says. Sure. Why not. 

Sylvain kisses his way down Felix’s stomach, stopping to tongue Felix’s navel with such intensity that Felix groans and yanks his head farther down. “You’re not funny,” he says. 

“That’s hurtful and untrue,” Sylvain says in response, kissing the soft skin underneath Felix’s navel. “But in this case, I’m not trying to be. Every part of you is just that sexy.” 

“Ugh.” Felix lets go of Sylvain’s head to prop himself up on his elbows. “You’re an embarrassment.” But it does make it easier to relax. This isn’t some possibly-rabid dog between his legs, deciding whether to lick or to bite; it’s just Sylvain.

“There we go,” Sylvain murmurs against his skin before kissing the crease where his hip meets his thigh. He keeps kissing down the line of it, then takes the head of Felix’s cock into his mouth, making a hot coil of tension tighten in Felix’s abdomen. Felix’s heels dig into Sylvain’s back as Sylvain keeps sucking. 

And then they dig in really hard, because he was not expecting a finger rubbing against his hole quite yet. 

“Is this okay?” Sylvain asks, letting Felix’s cock slip from between his lips. 

It’s _okay_ , Felix guesses. Well, maybe that’s unfair. It actually feels good, a pleasant pressure that makes his stomach jump. But it hasn’t gone in yet, and he’s apprehensive about that. “It’s dry,” he says. “Isn’t there supposed to be…?” He knows women get wet, anyway. 

“Yeah, of course, I was just thinking we’d take a little longer first. It feels better if you’re totally relaxed,” Sylvain says, still rubbing. Felix makes an effort to consciously relax, which is ruined when Sylvain continues, “but it does help to make it wet. Hey Felix, you have some sword oil, right?” 

“I have less than a quarter vial left and the only place it’s going is on swords,” Felix snaps without thinking. He’s given up a lot for Sylvain, but he’s not going to give up proper sword maintenance for him. Besides, there’s no way Sylvain doesn’t have anything. He might be reckless to the point of foolishness when it comes to his own wellbeing, but he has higher standard for Felix’s. 

Sure enough, Sylvain snickers into his thigh, then kisses it. “Good thing I brought my own, then!” 

Felix hadn’t even noticed Sylvain shaking the little vial out of his pants before laying them down, but he keeps his expression flat when Sylvain produces it from the grass like a magic trick. “So hard to please,” Sylvain sighs, and then pours half of it out directly onto Felix’s ass. 

It’s warmer than Felix thought it would be. But then, it was lying in the grass right in front of the fire. At least the temperature doesn’t make him jump when Sylvain starts working it in with one finger. 

The finger slides in slowly, but in one smooth motion. It’s really not that bad. In fact, it doesn’t hurt at all, Felix is surprised to find. It sits inside him, motionless at first, and then Sylvain strokes inside of him in a come-hither motion that makes static creep up Felix’s spine. 

Felix makes a strangled noise, collapsing flat on his back so he can cover his face with his hands again. Anything to keep Sylvain from seeing whatever his expression is doing.

“Good?” Sylvain asks smugly. 

“It’s fine,” Felix says, his face burning. It’s different more than it is anything else - but it’s not bad, which is what Felix was bracing for, and the sheer relief of that is better than he could have hoped for. He already knew Sylvain wouldn’t hurt him physically just to get his dick wet, but not knowing how it would feel has been...troublesome. 

Sylvain laughs. “You ready for the next one?”

“Bring it,” Felix says, and for once he means it. 

The next one does hurt. It’s startling what a difference it makes; the rim of his hole burns as it enters, and Felix abruptly realizes he might have bitten off more than he could chew. 

But Sylvain keeps kissing his cock and murmuring, “relax, push down on it,” and Felix does. It’s not so bad on the inside; the rim is the worst part, not quite stretching fast enough, and so sensitive that it aches around Sylvain’s fingers. 

_Adjust already,_ Felix tells himself. He’s so good at being flexible in battle; how is this any different? 

Sylvain strokes him from inside again, his fingertips dragging up Felix’s inner walls, and it feels nice, though it doesn’t do anything about the initial burn. “You need another few seconds?” 

For the first time in his life, Felix wishes he’d read more of the pornography Sylvain always tried to pawn off on him. Is it normal to need a few seconds? He’s no shaking waif. He can push through it and take whatever comes next. But it would be nice if he _could_ take a moment without failing to measure up against all of Sylvain’s previous sexual partners. 

“It’s fine,” Felix says finally. 

Sylvain hums, taking more of Felix’s cock into his mouth but otherwise keeping his fingers where they are, barely moving. Giving Felix the time he can’t bring himself to ask for.

Felix stares up at the dark sky above them, trying not to let the anger in his chest erupt. Where was this kind of care every time before? He didn’t need it any less then, and he hasn’t gotten any better at asking for it since. Is it a measure of his own weakness that he is so affected by things Sylvain doesn’t even think about?

“Felix?” Sylvain asks softly, petting Felix’s thigh with his other hand. “You’re tensing up again. And...” And he’s softening up; Felix can feel his erection starting to flag, even with Sylvain half-draped over it.

He breathes out harshly through his nose, trying to relax again. It would probably help if he knew a relaxation method other than swinging a sword until his muscles are too tired to tense up.

 _It’s only Sylvain,_ Felix reminds himself, trying to convince his body to go slack. 

It works, at least a little. He feels his body gradually start to open around Sylvain’s fingers. Not stretch, exactly, but - push. Prepare. It’s even more startling than the initial burn of penetration, which is finally starting to fade, leaving only the pleasant whisper of Sylvain’s fingertips touching him from the inside. 

“I’m just not used to it,” Felix says as an excuse. He doubts people are supposed to go soft during this. “But it’s starting to feel good.” 

“Yeah?” Sylvain asks. “That’s good, Felix...that’s all I want.” 

He rests his head on Felix’s abdomen as he starts thrusting his fingers gently, and Felix rests his hand on top of Sylvain’s head. 

It does feel good, sort of. It’s a subtler pleasure than having his cock stroked, but it’s still making something build inside of him, spread out and warm instead of hot and tightly coiled. His body seems to have adjusted, too, to the point that it doesn’t really hurt anymore, besides the residual ache from when it hurt before. 

But he doesn’t want to lie there all night with Sylvain’s fingers in his ass, so he says, “you can do more.” 

Sylvain kisses his abdomen softly. “You want more?” 

That’s not exactly what he said, but. “...sure.” 

Sylvain withdraws his fingers slowly, then rises up on his knees, kissing one of Felix’s ankles before dragging his legs further apart.

That’s when Felix realizes what ‘more’ means. Already? Felix has had Sylvain’s cock in his mouth; it’s not that slender. 

But Sylvain is already lining his cock up, stroking his fingers up Felix’s thigh as he pauses there. “Are you ready?” 

It’s driving Felix insane that he keeps asking. What’s Felix going to say, no? Even if he wanted to, he’s come too far to back down. So of course he says yes. He’s been saying yes this whole time. 

It burns again as Sylvain pushes in. Felix struggles to stretch around him, trying to do what he did with Sylvain’s fingers - relax, bear down, breathe - but it’s thicker and longer than Sylvain’s fingers, and the slow, careful way Sylvain inches inside feels more overwhelming than a quick slide would. 

The only consolation for Felix is that it seems equally overwhelming for Sylvain. His mouth is slack and open, his eyes fluttering shut like he can’t believe this. “Felix,” he gasps. “You’re so w-warm inside…” 

Felix shuts his own eyes, grabbing blindly at Sylvain’s shoulders. “Kiss me,” he demands, rising up to meet Sylvain’s lips as Sylvain bends down to meet him. 

Kissing Sylvain will probably never get old. He loves Sylvain’s mouth, the softness of his lips, its expressiveness; right now, he loves the way Sylvain doesn’t seem able to control it, not even able to kiss back properly. His mouth stays open as he pants, letting Felix distract himself by licking inside. 

He clings desperately to that until Sylvain breaks off, resting his forehead against Felix’s. “I’m all the way inside,” he moans. “You feel it, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Of course he fucking feels it; Sylvain’s buried so deep in him he practically feels it in his throat. 

Sylvain shudders and leans his upper body back, gripping Felix’s hips tight. There’s a look of ecstasy on his face, of completeness; he stares down at Felix in something like awe, and Felix has to look away. 

“I’m going to start moving,” Sylvain says. “I’m going - “ one of his hands grabs Felix’s half-hard cock, squeezing it. 

“Just do it,” Felix says, frustrated. Sylvain’s acting like he’s about to amputate something. He’s not sure if it’s ego or something else. Sure, Sylvain feels big inside him, but it’s not any worse than blowing him.

Sylvain groans and starts moving, and abruptly Felix is glad for the cushioning that the clothes folded underneath him provide. Each thrust shoves him back, punching the air out of him, countered only by Sylvain’s desperate grasp on his hip and on his cock. 

Sylvain folds over him, blocking out the stars. He keeps thrusting, but his attention is split between that and his hand, which keeps twisting over Felix’s cock just the way he likes it. 

Felix’s cock stiffens a little more in his grip, but it doesn’t get all the way hard, which only makes Sylvain more determined. Felix squeezes his eye shut, trying to focus on just one thing so he doesn’t get overstimulated, but it’s hard when everything is happening to him simultaneously. “Stop that and come here,” he orders, and mercifully, Sylvain listens, letting go of Felix’s cock to anchor both his hips with his hand. 

Felix feels Sylvain’s breath in his face, but he keeps his eyes shut as Sylvain pants over him. “Say that you want me,” Sylvain begs, and Felix doesn’t know what either of their faces are doing. “Felix, please, _please_ tell me you want me.” 

“I want you,” Felix says, holding onto Sylvain’s shoulders desperately. “Of course I want you.” Why would he let Sylvain use him like this if he didn’t want him? 

Sylvain sobs. Alarmed, Felix pets his neck, like Sylvain’s a horse. But then Sylvain is groaning again, his cock pulsing inside Felix, and he grabs Felix’s hips even harder as he comes. 

“Felix,” Sylvain whispers, resting his forehead against Felix’s shoulder. 

Felix keeps patting him, not sure what else to do. He can’t tell if Sylvain is overwhelmed by pleasure or something else, and it leaves him uncertain. Should he hug him? 

Luckily, Sylvain gathers himself before Felix has to decide. He pulls out slowly, careful not to hurt Felix, though it still feels weird when his cock fully withdraws. “That was amazing,” he says shakily, leaning up to kiss Felix. 

So that was good? Felix is going to strain something with all this back and forth. “Yeah,” he settles on saying when they part. 

“Now I’m going to take care of you,” Sylvain promises, sliding down Felix’s body to take Felix’s cock in his mouth again.

Goddess, always with the cock-sucking. Felix is exhausted already from being fucked. Can’t he just not come one night? 

Luckily, he’s also already stimulated from being fucked. Instead of taking as long to come in Sylvain’s mouth as before, it’s only a few minutes before he’s spilling into it, shuddering through an orgasm while Sylvain contentedly strokes his thighs. 

Sylvain wraps his arms around Felix’s waist, burying his face in Felix’s stomach again. Cuddling time, Felix guesses. He pats Sylvain’s head again, his other arm folded under his head as a pillow. He’s pretty sure Sylvain’s seed is leaking down his thighs and into the clothing under him, but that’s an issue he doesn’t have to deal with for a few minutes if he doesn’t want to. Hopefully it’s an item they have a spare of. 

Felix shifts experimentally, careful not to disturb Sylvain. His ass doesn’t feel so bad. He doesn’t feel bad in general, in fact. 

It really wasn’t any worse than blowing Sylvain. It was overwhelming and he doesn’t want to think about doing it again for another week minimum, but if this is his future, it’s not anything he can’t bear. 

Relieved, he dumps Sylvain off of him. “Hey!” Sylvain whines.

“Get up,” Felix says. “We can’t sleep naked. If bandits find us, you can’t fight them with your dick.” He looks around as he shifts off their clothes. “And you need to track down your replacement horse, too.” 

“What?” Sylvain’s head pops up. “Oh no, did she already wander off? Matilda! Mattie! No, that doesn’t fit. Tilly!” 

He ambles off, still stark naked. Felix rolls his eyes and puts his own pants on. They’re predictably come-stained already, but he can make Sylvain clean them tomorrow, when his old set is dry. 

Sylvain comes back not long after he’s fully dressed, steering the replacement with one hand against her shoulder. “You didn’t have to drag her back?” Felix asks. “What a shame. I would’ve liked to see that grappling match.”

“She’s a cavalry horse!” Sylvain protests. “Have a little faith in her. She was seeing where the tastiest grasses are around here, but she’s not going to abandon us for no reason.” He throws himself against her neck, just like he liked to do with Beauty when he was flattering her. It just looks a little odder when Felix can see his dick swing between his legs with the motion. “Isn’t that right, girl? Tilly? I really do need to give her a new name.”

“Not going to name her after me?” Felix asks, already digging through their packs for his sword oil. 

“No!” Sylvian says immediately. Felix raises an eyebrow at him, and Sylvain laughs sheepishly. “You don’t do that with cavalry horses. We go through them so quickly...it’s bad luck.” He lets go of the horse’s neck to leer at Felix. “But if that means you want me to ride you, you can just say so.” 

“Put your fucking pants on,” Felix says, unsheathing his sword across his lap. 

The rest of the night passes normally. Whatever weird mood Sylvain was in seems to have dissipated entirely. He’s still clingy, but instead of being strangely uncertain about it, he’s...romantic, Felix guesses. He keeps touching Felix just to touch him, putting his arm around Felix’s waist for no reason when they sit together, or stroking his back. Felix supposes getting his dick wet does that to him. Or, wet for real, at least, since nothing before this seems to have counted for Sylvain. 

Whatever. Felix is feeling pretty good himself. Far better than he thought he would. So he doesn’t shrug Sylvain off, enjoying the closeness while it lasts. He lies down to sleep with Sylvain wrapped around him, and he feels warmed all the way through. 

And he wakes up feeling doomed. 

He’s on his back, and there’s something on his chest, crushing it. Felix barely manages to gasp out a breath around it, desperately scrabbling his legs against the ground until he’s able to turn on his side. 

That doesn’t make it any better. If anything, the squeezing pressure increases, tightening until Felix feels like he can’t breathe at all. 

He curls in on himself, clutching his fingers to his ribs, trying to convince himself that his chest is inflating normally. That he _is_ breathing, no matter how it feels. 

_He’s going to leave me,_ he finds himself thinking, choking through another breath. He doesn’t know where the thought comes from, but it hits him like a divine revelation. Why _wouldn’t_ Sylvain leave him now? He’s gotten what he wants from him, what he wants from everyone he chases. Sylvain knows what it’s like to fuck him now, and so of course he’s going to move on. There’s nothing new Felix can offer him. 

Felix’s next breath comes out as a sob, and he digs his fingernails into his ribs. Where is this coming from? He was fine just a few hours ago. Sure, he’d thought about the possibility, but it hadn’t affected him like this. Now it feels like it’s not a possibility but a fact of the universe. Sylvain is going to leave, and it’s all Felix’s fault. 

Hot tears slip down his face as he gags on a sob, shoving a hand over his mouth. That’s not making it any easier to breathe, but he can’t stop himself from crying, making noises like a wounded animal. 

“Felix?” He hears sleepily behind his back, and Felix just hunches in on himself further. Which doesn’t help when he can’t stop sobbing, making it clear exactly what’s going on. 

“Oh, Felix…” Sylvain wraps his arms around him from behind, pulling him into the warmth of his chest.

But Felix can’t bear to be touched right now. He shoves Sylvain away, pushing as hard as he can when he _still can’t breathe_ , and curls back up, arms over his head like that will protect him. 

He can feel Sylvain staring at him, and that just makes it worse. He tries to ignore him, shuddering through a shaky gasp, telling himself over and over that he can breathe. 

He feels the warmth of Sylvain’s hand at his back, not touching, just hovering uncertainly there. Sylvain doesn’t try to touch him again, but his hand stays there until Felix finally manages to cry himself back to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Felix wakes up with a sore throat and burning eyes.

He gives himself a minute exactly to not deal with being awake. He shuts his eyes, covers them with his hand, and pretends he’s still asleep, peaceful and unaware.

Then his minute is over, and he makes himself sit up. 

Sylvain is hunched across the firepit, arms crossed as he stares at Felix. He looks like he didn’t sleep at all. His expression is dark and unreadable. 

“...I have a headache,” Felix says. 

Still staring at him, Sylvain picks his abandoned waterskin off the ground and tosses it at him. 

Felix crawls to get it, feeling like he’s being punished for something. At least drinking from it gives him an excuse not to look at Sylvain, and the water does soothe his throat, though it seems as if the pounding at his temples is here to stay. 

He sits on his heels. His body aches all over; like Sylvain, he didn’t get nearly enough sleep. For a second, Felix considers asking Sylvain to come back to rest with him. They can curl up and redo last night, only without Felix being struck by some kind of temporary insanity. Felix will even let Sylvain fuck him again, if that helps. It might be cowardly, but Felix doesn’t feel like being brave right now. If only Sylvain would go for it.

“Thanks,” he says to Sylvain, setting the waterskin back down. Sylvain says nothing back. He just keeps looking at him.

Sylvain’s not going to go for it. Felix groans and rubs his eyes. What is he supposed to say to make this better? Between the two of them, Sylvain’s the one who’s usually smoothing things over with his words. Felix prefers to let his actions speak for him. What exactly is he supposed to do, go crawl into Sylvain’s lap? 

“Do you regret it?” Sylvain asks abruptly. 

“Do I - ?” Belatedly it occurs to Felix what Sylvain is talking about. “No,” he says, looking Sylvain in the eyes. It’s even the truth. Felix is long past the point of having regrets. 

Sylvain barely reacts to that. He’s breathing harshly through his nose, loud like an angry animal. “Do you wish it was someone else?” 

“What?” Felix can’t tell if he’s being slow because he’s tired or if Sylvain isn’t making any sense. “Do I wish what was someone else?”

“Me,” Sylvain says. “Remember me? The person you’re with?”

“No!” Where did he even get that idea from? Who else would he even want Sylvain to be? “No, of course not.” He stares at the harsh, unmoving line of Sylvain’s mouth and tries to think of what to say. “I just...felt bad.” 

“You just felt bad.” It hangs there in the air. “And I’m supposed to believe it has nothing to do with me?” 

Felix wishes Sylvain would attack with half as much conviction when they train. As it is, it feels like Sylvain’s managed to hit him hard enough to disarm him, only without the contentment that goes along with that on the rare occasion it happens in a practice match. He has no idea what to say in response. 

Sylvain sighs. “Felix, you were crying.” His face crumples into an expression Felix can read - deep worry and distress. He looks like _he’s_ about to cry. “I never want to make you cry.” 

“You didn’t.” It’s even true. Felix’s idiotic emotions made him cry, and for reasons that don’t even make sense to him only a few hours later. Sylvain’s never in his entire life left a fling as long as he was getting what he wanted regularly, and Felix knows he matters more to Sylvain than a fling. Sylvain will flirt and cheat and brace himself for a slap, but in the end, he’s just like his horse: he’ll wander off to taste greener pastures, but as long as he keeps getting fed at home, he’ll always come back.

But he has no idea how to convince Sylvain. He’d rather swallow his own sword than admit that whole sorry episode was over the thought of Sylvain leaving him. He doesn’t need Sylvain’s standard placating speeches making him feel even worse. 

He stops trying. So Sylvain saw him cry last night - that’s humiliating, but Felix can recover. Sylvain has seen him cry more than any person in all of Fodlan, even if the last time was nearly a decade ago. He’ll get over it. “Can we go hunt breakfast already?” Felix asks. “I’m sick of sitting around.” 

Sylvain keeps frowning at him, and for a second Felix thinks he’s going to keep pushing. But he must realize he’s not going to get anywhere no matter how hard he tries; he looks away, his shoulders dropping in defeat. “Yeah, okay.” 

They move deeper into the forest slowly, Sylvain’s replacement horse left behind to wander and get her own breakfast. Neither of them are at their best, but luckily, rabbits aren’t as smart as enemy soldiers, even if they’re annoyingly quick. 

Felix wishes he had his bow. He hasn’t used a bow in combat since he was a boy, but as a child he trained with it nearly as much as he trained with his sword, going back and forth between the two for years before he’d chosen. Even then, he’d sometimes taken his bow with him to the training grounds just for fun, and to ensure that his aim never dulled. It hadn’t; if Felix had his bow, he’d have a whole brace of rabbits by now. He usually keeps one around for that very purpose, though he lost his somewhere in Blaiddyd Pass.

Sylvain never trained with a bow. The Lance of Ruin ruled his destiny years before he was permitted to wield it. Felix remembers him as a child on the training grounds at Gautier, the training lance in his hands weighing down his shoulders as if it were a lot heavier than it was. And then at the training grounds at Fraldarius, empty-handed; without his father there to force him, Sylvain used every excuse he could muster to just watch, or leave entirely.

Perhaps when Felix gets a new bow in Fraldarius, he’ll see if Sylvain wants to try it out. Until then, they’re stuck trying to flush out rabbits by way of a pincer movement. Simultaneous attacks to the enemy’s flanks tend to work well for him and Sylvain when they’re facing down bandits or enemy soldiers. Against rabbits, they’re less effective, because rabbits are small and fast and very hard to corner in a forest. 

Felix is starting to realize his chosen distraction method is a bad one. 

“What about traps?” He asks after he misses his target for the third time. It’s humiliating. Felix doesn’t miss. “We could make traps if we gather enough branches.”

“You hate making traps,” Sylvain says. “But then, I guess anything is better than talking about what’s going on with you, right?”

Sylvain will get over it, Felix reminds himself. He just wishes Sylvain would get over it _faster_. 

Maybe Felix can help with that. 

He’s not good with words, and he seems especially bad with them around Sylvain. He’s always been at his best letting his actions speak for him. Sylvain seems to be under the impression that Felix doesn’t want him; what better way to prove otherwise than to show him? 

And it might be good for Felix, too. When was the last time he initiated things? He’s been treating sex with Sylvain like Sylvain treats training; an obligation to fulfill, but never something to enjoy. As a result, he’s been as halfhearted and lackluster as Sylvain is in a practice match, the dread too deeply ingrained for the experience to be enjoyable. He can bear it being this way forever if he has to, but why should he have to? 

He lets his eyes wander over Sylvain, taking in the strength of his arms and the thick, meaty curve of his thighs. His eyes shine with determination as he grinds the butt of his lance into the dirt. The flex of the tendons in his neck make Felix want to bite. 

Why treat this as an obligation when he genuinely wants Sylvain? There has to be a way to circumvent his brain’s ridiculous panic reaction, to shut up the voice in the back of his head always telling him that he’s not ready, that things are moving too fast. If he initiates things and stays in control the whole time, maybe it will break this whole idiotic pattern. 

He considers Sylvain, and Sylvain catches it, straightening up to lock eyes with him. Felix licks his lips. Sylvain’s not going to be satisfied with fully-clothed grinding, but maybe Felix is past that. He let Sylvain come in his ass; he must be prepared for more than he thinks. Would Sylvain let him fuck him? He thinks so - but it’s probably a bad idea to try, Felix realizes, thinking of the way Sylvain laughed and rubbed his jaw when Felix took too long to come. He’s hardly an expert, but it seems logical that there’s some upper limit to how long someone can be fucked before it starts to feel bad. 

Whatever. Felix is good at improvising. With that in mind, he sheathes his sword. “Put down your lance,” he says, still looking Sylvain in the eye.

Sylvain frowns, but he does it, letting the Lance of Ruin fall into the dirt like it’s nothing more precious than a wooden stick. “Happy?”

“Very,” Felix says, and steps forward to press Sylvain against the trunk of a tree. 

He means to kiss Sylvain as hard as he can, to show Sylvain how he feels - but instead Sylvain grabs him by the shoulders before he can reach, their lips and their bodies separated by inches. 

Frowning, Felix extends his neck, meaning to close that gap. But Sylvain turns his head away. “I don’t think that’s a great idea,” he says. 

Frustrated, Felix pulls back, just enough to look Sylvain in the face. He can feel his eyes start to burn - he’s already made too much eye contact, and he wants to pull away - but he forces himself to lock gazes with Sylvain. “Why?” He demands. “I want you. Don’t you want me?”

“I always want you,” Sylvain says. His grip on Felix’s shoulders doesn’t soften at all, though. “But this doesn’t feel right. Not after last night.”

By all the fucking Saints. 

“Pathetic,” Felix sneers, scrambling desperately to get the upper hand. “If you can’t get it up, just tell me.”

“I’m being pathetic? Why, because I care about you?” Sylvain asks, just as vicious. “You can pretend not to have feelings - but wait, you can’t, because you cried your eyes out - “

“So much for being insatiable,” Felix fires back. “It’s fine for you to decide when we have sex - “ 

“ - but you still won’t tell me what’s actually going on, so I’m just supposed to - “

“ - but the _one time_ I want to have sex - “

“ - act like I didn’t notice, because Goddess forbid you - “ Sylvain breaks off. “...what do you mean, the one time you want to have sex?”

Silence. Felix can’t even look him in the eye, much less say anything.

“Felix.” Sylvain’s fingers tighten against his shoulders. “What do you mean, the one time you want to have sex?” 

He’s too close. Felix meant to pin him against a tree, but instead he feels as if he’s the one who’s been trapped. So he does what he always does: he fights his way out. “What does it sound like I mean?” He demands. “This is it: the one time I _actually_ want to have sex. Did you fail to notice I didn’t want it before?” 

Felix is usually so good at striking exactly where and how he means to, but he sees this hit harder than he meant it to. Sylvain’s face drains of color and his trembling hands fall from Felix’s shoulders. “You didn’t - “ Sylvain stutters. “I didn’t - “ 

He falls to his knees, retching. 

Alarmed, Felix falls with him, sitting on his knees before Sylvain while Sylvain puts a desperate hand to his mouth, hunched over like he’s going to vomit for real. 

Felix tentatively pats his back. Sylvain hunches away from his hand. 

Felix ends up sitting there, his hand hovering over Sylvain’s back as Sylvain breathes in rapid sobs, wondering how he’d lost control of the situation so fast.

“It’s okay,” he ends up saying. “Everything is fine.”

Sylvain covers his eyes with his hands, shaking all over. “Why?” He asks. “I thought you wanted me. You said you wanted me. I’d never make you, you have to know I’d never make you.” 

He’s pathetic, trembling there, but all the sympathy Felix feels is rapidly swallowed up by anger. “You couldn’t _make_ me,” he hisses. “I’m stronger than you. But why would you have to, when I knew you’d leave if I didn’t do whatever you wanted?”

Sylvain shakes his head frantically. “I wouldn’t - “

“Lie to yourself if you want, but don’t lie to me!” He doesn’t know how he ended up yelling, but it feels good. After all the fear and hesitation, after all the ways Felix has twisted himself in knots to make this work, pure anger feels better than anything else could. “You treat me like you treat everyone you fuck. I didn’t blow you fast enough and you cheated on me. Do you think I’m stupid?” 

“That’s not why I - “ Sylvain retches again. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please...I thought you wanted me. You said you wanted me,” he repeats, like a spell of protection.

“Of course I want you,” Felix snaps. “I’m not the one who lies! I want _you_ , Sylvain. I want to be with you. You made it clear enough that meant shutting up and choking on your dick whenever you wanted.” 

“Oh, Goddess.” Sylvain stands so abruptly that Felix ends up falling back to get out of the way. He’s still leaning back on his elbows as Sylvain stumbles away, barely catching himself on another tree before he falls over. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Sylvain says again, the miserable, defeated line of his back to Felix. “I can’t - I won’t hurt you any more.” 

“You didn’t _hurt_ me,” Felix scoffs. But Sylvain is already slipping behind a tree, leaving Felix scoffing at nothing. 

He sits there for a moment longer, his anger rapidly congealing into bewilderment and regret. He has no idea what just happened. How did things change so quickly? 

Did he make a mistake?

He gets to his feet, stumbling a little as he chases after Sylvain. “Sylvain?” He calls tentatively, and then louder when there’s no response.

Nothing.

Sylvain must have gone back to the campsite, he tells himself. Any other possibility is unthinkable. 

He retraces his steps, finding the burnt-out firepit and the saddlebags beside it. Sylvain’s replacement horse is nowhere to be found, but after a few minutes sitting there feeling useless, Felix goes looking for her and finds her not too far away, eating grass without a care in the world.

Felix leads her back to the campsite, nerves itching. He’s never been good at just sitting around. But Sylvain has to be back soon, right? He wouldn’t just leave his horse. 

Except Sylvain is used to leaving his horse. He said they go through horses like water in the cavalry, Felix remembers. 

Still, Felix sits and waits for an hour before he accepts the truth. 

Sylvain has left him. He’s not coming back.

He waits for despair to hit him. Instead, hysteria rolls over him like the tide, leaving him laughing stupidly into his own hands. Every swallowed bit of panic, every time he’d pressed forward when he wasn’t ready to, every last thing he did to keep himself from losing Sylvain - and he lost him anyway! Felix should have seen it coming. When is the last time he had something good and right and actually got to keep it? 

All that time spent convincing himself to do things he could just barely stand to keep from losing Sylvain romantically and it hadn’t even occurred to Felix that Sylvain would leave entirely. What is Felix even supposed to do with the horse? He’s no good at managing them. 

And then he realizes.

Sylvain _left him the horse_.

Felix dives for the saddlebags, searching through them. Sure enough, his normal set of clothing is there, neatly folded - and beside it are half the dry rations, with the other half on Felix’s person.

Sylvain, who is reckless at the best of times, is a day’s journey from a perilously shifting battlefront, and is planning to walk for four days without any rations, without anyone to watch his back, and - knowing Sylvain - without any potions. He doesn’t even have his mount and will have to fight on the ground if he runs into trouble, where he isn’t at his best.

Felix curses and grabs the replacement horse around her neck. 

He’s never been a strong rider, and he’s usually had someone else to saddle his horse for him. As a result, it takes a few fumbling tries to get Matilda into her tack, and Felix curses himself for the lost time. But it’s necessary; he’s not a strong enough rider to direct her while on bareback, or even to stay on her without stirrups if they have to take any turns at a gallop. Sylvain’s always getting on his case for not wrapping his legs tightly enough around his horse’s sides. 

Finally, he swings himself up into the saddle, clinging hard to Matilda’s neck as she prances a few steps forward in response. “It’s fine,” he says, patting her neck awkwardly. “We have to go.”

But go where? Sylvain has an hour and a quarter’s head start on him. If he’s smart, he will have stuck on the same path they’ve been on all along, tracing the route to Fraldarius while staying off the main road to avoid any bandits. They’ve already spent a day walking east; from this point, it will barely take more time to go to Fraldarius than go straight to Gautier, especially if he picks up supplies and another horse in Fraldarius. 

Taking the road to Gautier instead would be foolish. It would require skirting around Fhirdiad and the thousands of enemies crawling in and around it while trying to forage or hunt on lands that have been burnt to barren wastelands over the last few years of battle. It would be a perilous enough journey for a whole battalion; for one man alone, it would be idiocy.

Despite what he shouts at Sylvain when he’s being especially reckless, Felix knows Sylvain isn’t usually an idiot. But Sylvain has convinced himself that he’s hurt Felix in some terrible way - he’s not going to be making smart decisions.

He leaves the saddlebags behind as he takes off at a trot, unwilling to weigh himself down with anything unessential. The terrain is too uneven to risk cantering - possibly even a fast trot is too much, though Felix will have to ask Sylvain - but he has too much ground to cover to let her walk. 

Felix nudges Matilda through the trees with his calves, trying to ascertain the best path. They’re far off the direct path from Blaiddyd to Gautier; Sylvain would have had to choose an angle to walk to meet the main road. Felix can’t see him doubling back to the start of the road. But he’s not sure exactly where that road to Gautier even is. He can picture it on a map, but he’s never had cause to use it. Would Sylvain know where it is? He’s always had a better memory than Felix. 

“Pointless,” he mutters to himself, and sets Matilda to keep going directly northwest. 

She’s well-trained and responsive - _too_ well-trained and responsive for a rider like Felix. He’s far too tense, bouncing in the saddle instead of following her movements, and she keeps picking up on it and lengthening her stride in response, until he notices she’s speeding up too much and yanks on the reins like an amateur to collect her. It’s unfair to her; she deserves a rider who doesn’t seem to constantly change his mind every few seconds. But Felix is gripped by fear that makes him unintentionally drive her forward. Sylvain is a reckless idiot at the best of times - at a time like this, who knows what he’s going to do to himself? 

Matilda makes a wheezing noise, then breaks into a canter, working so hard for him when he’s barely given her the dignity of being called by name. Felix squeezes his eyes shut and uses his seat to gentle Matilda back into a trot, and then he focuses on grounding himself so he stops driving her crazy. 

“Sorry,” he mutters, scrubbing his hand over his eyes. 

Even at a trot, the distance is a lot for Matilda to cover. She keeps panting, her lips smacking each other with every step as she starts to reach the end of her endurance. 

Felix tries to calculate how long they’ve been riding by the angle of the sun, a task made difficult by the dark clouds cloaking it. At a trot, a horse would need just over twenty minutes to cover the same distance that a man walking an hour would; so if Sylvain started out an hour and a quarter before them, and they ride for thirty minutes, they should catch up. Except that Sylvain would also have been walking those extra thirty minutes, so they’d need another...ten minutes to catch up? He thinks that makes sense.

Felix groans. There’s a reason he never did well on any of the exams at the Officer’s Academy that involved arithmetic. 

He lets Matilda decide for him. When she starts slowing, he eases her into a walk, and then to a stop so he can swing himself off her back. He should untack her, but he has no time; instead, he hastily slips the bit from her mouth so she can eat. “Have some grass or something,” he says, then turns to shout Sylvain’s name. 

He’s still a good several hours from the open road and from Fhirdiad, but it’s still a bad idea to announce his presence like this anywhere near the border with the Dukedom. Felix can’t bring himself to care. If Sylvain has gotten into trouble - if anything has happened to him - 

“Sylvain!” He yells again. There’s no response.

Did he underestimate Sylvain’s capacity for making intelligent choices? Is he actually stomping along the road to Fraldarius, only a day and a half away from sleeping in the same room Rodrigue allotted to him when he was a child? Somehow Felix doubts it. But then where is Sylvain? There’s only so many ways to go without running too far west towards Fhirdiad. And he wouldn’t ignore Felix when he called. Felix can hear the ragged edge of his own voice. He sounds terrible. And no matter how upset Sylvain is, he won’t leave Felix alone if he thinks Felix needs him.

The more likely possibility is that Sylvain is some distance ahead or behind him. Felix grits his teeth together. How is he supposed to tell which it is? 

Felix is contemplating starting a signal fire when he hears a shout. It’s distant, but urgent - and then it’s followed by a sound that’s nearly more familiar to him than the sound of human voices: blades crossing.

Felix unsheathes his sword and starts running. 

The trees are bare and gaunt, but Felix still nearly misses sight of the fight through the branches, it’s so contained. But the sound is unmistakable, and so is the flash of red hair he sees right before ducking into the fray.

Sylvain has already taken down two bandits. Three remain, which is at least one too many for him; he’s already changed up his grip on his lance to account for a weakness in his right arm and the fur of his collar is soaked with blood. 

Felix doesn’t say anything, doesn’t warn him; he just strikes, cutting down the one furthest on the right - a monk - so fast she doesn’t even have time to scream. Sylvain shoves over on instinct, giving Felix enough room to cut through and come to his side, and only after Felix has run her through do his eyes widen in surprise.

“Felix?”

“You take the mercenary, I’ll take the thief,” Felix says. 

Five bandits was too many for Sylvain alone - but two bandits are nothing to the two of them. The thief is fast, but he can’t land even a glancing blow on Felix before Felix stabs him through the thigh. The thief keeps trying to stab him as his legs collapse, leaking blood so quickly he’s bound to be dead within minutes. Felix respects that enough to grant him an easier death, taking the time to slit his throat before checking on Sylvain.

Sylvain’s taking his lance out of the mercenary’s eye socket, grimacing a bit as he does so. He’s always been squeamish about the eyes. He flicks his lance clean, or at least cleaner, before turning to face Felix. “Why are you here? It’s a lot safer heading towards Fraldarius.” 

Honestly. “Because I’m going to safely head towards Fraldarius while you run off towards the Dukedom without any supplies,” Felix says. “Idiot.” Then he starts digging at his belt, untying the loop of his potions belt. “I have an elixir and a concoction. Take your pick.” 

“Felix - “ Sylvain sighs. “I’ll take the concoction,” he says dully. “Thanks.” 

Felix hands it over. Sylvain doesn’t let their fingers brush when he takes it. 

“I brought your horse, by the way,” Felix says. “And all the dry rations. You need to carry half. I’m tired of carrying your things everywhere.” 

“Fine,” Sylvain says, then downs the concoction. 

Felix watches him. It doesn’t feel like they’re fighting, but it also doesn’t feel like they’re _not_ fighting. 

“I can’t believe you almost lost to a bunch of thieves,” Felix says, just to say something. “You’re better trained than that.” 

Does Sylvain understand what Felix is saying? _I can’t believe I almost lost you, don’t do that to me?_ He can’t say it any other way. 

Sylvain just shrugs, not letting on one way or another. “It was careless of me,” he says. “I guess that’s what I get for fighting a bunch of Kingdom deserters.” At Felix’s frown, he elaborates. “They told me right before they tried gutting me. Apparently, over half the soldiers stationed at Itha have given up and left for home, or left to wander around in search of travelers to rob. It sounds like the army hasn’t been doing the best job feeding them.”

“That’s…” Devastating isn’t a strong enough word. Felix has gone over the grain allotments with his father; they’re already depriving the peasantry of more than is sustainable in order to keep the army fed, though not as much as Cornelia is reportedly depriving the peasantry of in the Dukedom to keep the Empire coffers full. If the army _isn’t_ being fed, then that means no one is. 

A starving nation can’t win a war. But then, Felix is far past thinking they’re going to win. 

“Come back to Fraldarius with me,” he says instead of anything else. When Sylvain looks like he’s going to protest, he adds, “I’m going to come with you to Gautier otherwise.”

Sylvain grimaces. “Yeah, okay.” 

They wipe their weapons clean in silence, then walk in silence, then collect Matilda in silence. Sylvain doesn’t even say any of the useless things he usually says to his horses as he grabs her by her bridle and keeps walking. It’s disconcerting. He doesn’t even seem angry, just...tired. Completely wrung out.

Felix feels similarly. Now that Sylvain’s safe, the panic that drove him forward is fading, leaving behind the same tiredness that’s been haunting him since he woke up. His throat feels entirely dried out and his headache feels worse than ever. They’ll have to find another stream to refill their waterskins; but, more pressingly, Felix has to figure out what to say. 

“It wasn’t…” he falters. Goddess, can’t they have more bandits to fight instead? “It wasn’t the one time I wanted to have sex,” he says. “I usually did want it. It was only a few times when it was...otherwise.”

“Yeah.” Sylvain doesn’t look bolstered by this at all. “Just lately. I was thinking about that. Every time I kept going even though you were taking a while to come, right?” Felix hesitates, which seems to be answer enough for Sylvain. “Right.” 

“You’re the one who kept - you always want more!” Felix says. “What was I supposed to do, let you leave me behind?”

Sylvain looks pained. “I would have waited forever for you.”

Would it be cruel to point out that their forever will probably end before they see the Lone Moon? “Am I the only person you’ve said that to?” He asks instead.

Sylvain flinches. “You’re the only person I’ve meant it for.” 

“Am I the only person you’ve said _that_ to?” Felix presses. Then, realizing he’s gone on the attack again like this is another fight, he says, “never mind.” Of course Sylvain has said all his lines to a dozen people before Felix. Sylvain probably doesn’t even think of it as lying; to him, it’s just routine. Another type of muscle memory, like all the automatic things Felix has been saying and doing to keep Sylvain, and even more deeply ingrained and difficult to overcome. 

“Felix.” Sylvain’s hands open and shut uselessly before him, as though searching for something to grasp onto. “I know there’s nothing I can say to make you believe me, but you’re different to me. You’re the only person I’ve meant a lot of things for. You’re the only one I…” He laughs unhappily. “I guess you wouldn’t believe me if I said it.”

Felix has seen Sylvain play at this kind of helpless, overwhelmed sincerity so many times that it’s startling to see the real thing. But it is the real thing. Isn’t it? Felix is usually so good at telling when Sylvain is just thoughtlessly running through his lines, but it’s not like he’s usually around for the big confession scene. 

But when has Sylvain ever been so thoughtless when he knew Felix really needed him?

“Sylvain,” he says, not sure what he’s going to say next.

Which is when the sky breaks open above them and pours down rain.

It hits them like a slap, sheet after sheet of solid water coming down ceaselessly. Felix curses, trying to shove his sodden bangs out of his eyes. He can see Sylvain grab at Matilda’s wet reins as she rears up in alarm, but the rain is coming down so hard it’s impossible to hear anything over it. 

_Higher ground,_ he mouths at Sylvain. The last thing they need is to get caught in a flash flood. 

They stumble together up the closest thing there is to a hill, Matilda fighting every step of the way as Sylvain tries to force her up. There’s a crack of thunder, and then Sylvain’s falling backwards, having lost his grip on the reins.

Felix lunges for them, but Matilda’s faster; she bolts into the gloom, disappearing behind rows of twisted trees. 

“Fuck!” Felix makes an aborted step, as if to chase after her, before stopping himself. He’ll never catch her. Instead, he grabs Sylvain under his arms, helping to haul him upright. “Come on,” he says, though he doubts Sylvain can hear him. 

They make it to the top of the hill, though it barely qualifies. If it truly starts flooding, they’ll need to start climbing trees to avoid getting washed away. He tries not to think of what will happen to Matilda then. 

There’s nearly no cover; the bare, gnarled trees offer little protection. Still, Felix and Sylvain end up side by side with their backs to the trunk of one, the thick branches overhead helping at least a little to shelter them from the rainfall as the wind dies down. 

Sylvain doesn’t put his arm around Felix, just stands there shivering beside him. When Felix presses in closer, Sylvain bears it, neither flinching away nor pressing back. 

Is this it? Felix wonders. He’d swallowed his pride so many times to avoid losing Sylvain, and here Sylvain is, at his side and yet lost to him. Is this going to be Sylvain’s new muscle memory, so convinced that he’s hurt Felix irreparably that his body will train itself to stop responding to Felix at all? 

In that moment, more than anything in all of Fódlan, Felix wishes they could have more time. Enough time for Sylvain to realize his touch won’t burn Felix; enough time for Felix to learn how to express what he really means in some way Sylvain will understand. 

But that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? They don’t have enough time. They’ve never had enough time. Felix isn’t sure exactly when they ran out - when the war broke out, perhaps, or when Ingrid left them for the Golden Deer and their strange new professor, or the moment when Felix realized Dimitri was truly lost to him, all those years ago when they suppressed the Western Church. Perhaps they’ve been running out of time since the moment of their birth, and Felix only noticed the jaws start to close around them too late.

The rain quiets a little, still falling but not as rapidly as it evens out to a more sustainable pace. It will probably fall like this for hours, Felix thinks.

He touches Sylvain’s hand with his own. Sylvain doesn’t move away, and he doesn’t look at him, either, until Felix clasps Sylvain’s fingers with his own.

For a moment, Sylvain’s hand hangs limply in his own. But then Sylvain squeezes tight, as if reassuring himself Felix is still there with him, and Felix squeezes back, equally desperate.

If this had happened a day ago, Sylvain would have wrapped Felix in a hug, pinning Felix between himself and the tree as he let the rain sluice down his own back. Today, all Sylvain does is say, “I think we’re going to die here.” 

“Probably,” Felix says. He can’t see how they’ll avoid it. Perhaps somewhere along the way there had been a different choice they could have made, another path to take. But Felix had started down this path with his sword in hand and Sylvain beside him long ago; there is no path back. They can only keep pressing forwards into their cold, bleak future.

Stiffly, he puts his head on Sylvain’s shoulder. It’s not comfortable, not with Sylvain’s armor, but it’s all he can do.

Somehow, that’s what causes Sylvain to break; he falls to his knees, sending Felix falling with him. And then they’re clutching each other desperately, heedless of the mud and water soaking them. Sylvain’s fingers dig deep into Felix’s back; Sylvain’s forehead rests on his shoulder. 

Felix wraps his arms around Sylvain, equally desperate. He rests his chin on the side of Sylvain’s head, feeling Sylvain shake in his arms.

“I wish - ” Sylvain starts, breathing raggedly. “I just wish we could have - ”

“Me too,” Felix says into his wet hair. He strokes Sylvain’s back, not sure if Sylvain can even feel it through his armor. “I do too.”

Sylvain chokes on a laugh. “Good thing we promised to die together.”

“I’d hoped it would be later,” Felix admits. He stares out into the darkness around them and somehow, in that moment, is able to say the words that he’s never been able to say before. “I wanted us to survive long enough to have more. To keep pushing each other to get stronger, until we were so old and feeble neither of us could lift a sword.”

“That’s a beautiful dream,” Sylvain says. “I wish we could’ve seen it.” 

“Yeah,” Felix says, closing his eyes. “Yeah.”

The rain keeps falling around them. When it finally stops, the world is no brighter, and just as cold.


End file.
